Title: Pirates Of Venus
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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Language: English
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"If a female figure in a white shroud enters your
bedchamber at midnight on the thirteenth day of this month, answer
this letter; otherwise, do not."

Having read this far in the letter, I was about to
consign it to the wastebasket, where all my crank letters go; but
for some reason I read on, "If she speaks to you, please
remember her words and repeat them to me when you write." I
might have read on to the end; but at this juncture the telephone
bell rang, and I dropped the letter into one of the baskets on my
desk. It chanced to be the "out" basket; and had events followed
their ordinary course, this would have been the last of the letter
and the incident in so far as I was concerned, for from the "out"
basket the letter went to the files.

It was Jason Gridley on the telephone. He seemed excited and
asked me to come to his laboratory at once. As Jason is seldom
excited about anything, I hastened to accede to his request and
satisfy my curiosity. Jumping into my roadster, I soon covered the
few blocks that separate us, to learn that Jason had good grounds
for excitement He had just received a radio message from the inner
world, from Pellucidar.

On the eve of the departure of the great dirigible, O-220, from
the earth's core, following the successful termination of that
historic expedition, Jason had determined to remain and search for
von Horst, the only missing member of the party; but Tarzan, David
Innes, and Captain Zuppner had persuaded him of the folly of such
an undertaking, inasmuch as David had promised to dispatch an
expedition of his own native Pellucidarian warriors to locate the
young German lieutenant if he still lived and it were possible to
discover any clue to his whereabouts.

Notwithstanding this, and though he had returned to the outer
world with the ship, Jason had always been harassed by a sense of
responsibility for the fate of von Horst, a young man who had been
most popular with all the members of the expedition; and had
insisted time and time again that he regretted having left
Pellucidar until he had exhausted every means within his power of
rescuing von Horst or learned definitely that he was dead.

Jason waved me to a chair and offered me a cigarette. "I've just
had a message from Abner Perry," he announced, "the first for
months."

"It must have been interesting," I commented, "to excite
you."

"It was," he admitted. "A rumor has reached Sari that von Horst
has been found."

Now as this pertains to a subject entirely foreign to the
present volume, I might mention that I have alluded to it only for
the purpose of explaining two facts which, while not vital, have
some slight bearing on the remarkable sequence of events which
followed. First, it caused me to forget the letter I just
mentioned, and, second, it fixed the date in my mind—the
tenth.

My principal reason for mentioning the first fact is to stress
the thought that the matter of the letter, so quickly and
absolutely forgotten, had no opportunity to impress itself upon my
mind and therefore could not, at least objectively, influence my
consideration of ensuing events. The letter was gone from my mind
within five minutes of its reading as completely as though it had
never been received.

The next three days were exceedingly busy ones for me, and when
I retired on the night of the thirteenth my mind was so filled with
the annoying details of a real estate transaction that was going
wrong, that it was some time before I could sleep. I can truthfully
affirm that my last thoughts were of trust deeds, receivers in
equity, and deficiency judgments.

What awoke me, I do not know. I sat up with a start just in time
to see a female figure, swathed in what appeared to be a white
winding sheet, enter my room through the door. You will note that I
say door rather than doorway, for such was the fact; the door was
closed. It was a clear, moonlit night; the various homely objects
in my room were plainly discernible, especially the ghostly figure
now hovering near the foot of my bed.

I am not subject to hallucinations, I had never seen a ghost, I
had never wished to, and I was totally ignorant of the ethics
governing such a situation. Even had the lady not been so obviously
supernatural, I should yet have been at a loss as to how to receive
her at this hour in the intimacy of my bedchamber, for no strange
lady had ever before invaded its privacy, and I am of Puritan
stock.

"It is midnight of the thirteenth," she said, in a low, musical
voice.

"So it is," I agreed, and then I recalled the letter that I had
received on the tenth.

"He left Guadalupe today," she continued; "he will wait in
Guaymas for your letter."

That was all. She crossed the room and passed out of it, not
through the window which was quite convenient, but through the
solid wall. I sat there for a full minute, staring at the spot
where I had last seen her and endeavoring to convince myself that I
was dreaming, but I was not dreaming; I was wide awake. In fact I
was so wide awake that it was fully an hour before I had
successfully wooed Morpheus, as the Victorian writers so neatly
expressed it, ignoring the fact that his sex must have made it
rather embarrassing for gentlemen writers.

I reached my office a little earlier than usual the following
morning, and it is needless to say that the first thing that I did
was to search for that letter which I had received on the tenth. I
could recall neither the name of the writer nor the point of origin
of the letter, but my secretary recalled the latter, the letter
having been sufficiently out of the ordinary to attract his
attention.

"It was from somewhere in Mexico," he said, and as letters of
this nature are filed by states and countries, there was now no
difficulty in locating it.

You may rest assured that this time I read the letter carefully.
It was dated the third and post marked Guaymas. Guaymas is a
seaport in Sonora, on the Gulf of California.

Here is the letter:

My dear Sir:

"Being engaged in a venture of great scientific importance, I find
it necessary to solicit the assistance (not financial) of some one
psychologically harmonious, who is at the same time of sufficient
intelligence and culture to appreciate the vast possibilities of my
project.

"Why I have addressed you I shall be glad to explain in the happy
event that a personal interview seems desirable. This can only be
ascertained by a test which I shall now explain.

"If a female figure in a white shroud enters your bedchamber at
midnight on the thirteenth day of this month, answer this letter;
otherwise, do not. If she speaks to you, please remember her words
and repeat them to me when you write.

"Assuring you of my appreciation of your earnest consideration of
this letter, which I realize is rather unusual, and begging that
you hold its contents in strictest confidence until future events
shall have warranted its publication, I am, Sir,

"Very respectfully yours,

"Carson Napier."

"It looks to me like another nut," commented Rothmund.

"So it did to me on the tenth," I agreed; "but today is the
fourteenth, and now it looks like another story."

"What has the fourteenth got to do with it?" he demanded.

"Yesterday was the thirteenth," I reminded him.

"You don't mean to tell me—" he started, skeptically.

"That is just what I do mean to tell you," I interrupted. "The
lady came, I saw, she conquered."

"Which nurse? I had nine, and no two of them told me the same
things."

"Jerry. She said that narcotics often affected a patient's mind
for months afterward." His tone was solicitous.

"Well, at least Jerry admitted that I had a mind, which some of
the others didn't. Anyway, it didn't affect my eyesight; I saw what
I saw. Please take a letter to Mr. Napier." A few days later I
received a telegram from Napier dated Guaymas.

"LETTER RECEIVED STOP THANKS STOP SHALL CALL ON YOU TOMORROW,"
it read.

"He must be flying," I commented.

"Or coming in a white shroud," suggested Ralph. "I think I'll
phone Captain Hodson to send a squad car around here; sometimes
these nuts are dangerous." He was still skeptical.

I must admit that we both awaited the arrival of Carson Napier
with equal interest. I think Ralph expected to see a wild-eyed
maniac. I could not visualize the man at all.

About eleven o'clock the following morning Ralph came into my
study. "Mr. Napier is here," he said.

"Does his hair grow straight out from his scalp, and do the
whites of his eyes show all around the irises?" I inquired,
smiling.

"No," replied Ralph, returning the smile; "he is a very fine
looking man, but," he added, "I still think he's a nut."

"Ask him to come in," and a moment later Ralph ushered in an
exceptionally handsome man whom I judged to be somewhere between
twenty-five and thirty years old, though he might have been even
younger.

He came forward with extended hand as I rose to greet him, a
smile lighting his face; and after the usual exchange of banalities
he came directly to the point of his visit.

"To get the whole picture clearly before you," he commenced, "I
shall have to tell you something about myself. My father was a
British army officer, my mother an American girl from Virginia. I
was born in India while my father was stationed there, and brought
up under the tutelage of an old Hindu who was much attached to my
father and mother. This Chand Kabi was something of a mystic, and
he taught me many things that are not in the curriculums of schools
for boys under ten. Among them was telepathy, which he had
cultivated to such a degree that he could converse with one in
psychological harmony with himself quite as easily at great
distances as when face to face. Not only that, but he could project
mental images to great distances, so that the recipient of his
thought waves could see what Chand Kabi was seeing, or whatever
else Chand Kabi wished him to see. These things he taught me."

"And it was thus you caused me to see my midnight visitor on the
thirteenth?" I inquired.

He nodded. "That test was necessary in order to ascertain if we
were in psychological harmony. Your letter, quoting the exact words
that I had caused the apparition to appear to speak, convinced me
that I had at last found the person for whom I have been searching
for some time.

"But to get on with my story. I hope I am not boring you, but I
feel that it is absolutely necessary that you should have full
knowledge of my antecedents and background in order that you may
decide whether I am worthy of your confidence and assistance or
not." I assured him that I was far from being bored, and he
proceeded.

"I was not quite eleven when my father died and my mother
brought me to America. We went to Virginia first and lived there
for three years with my mother's grandfather, Judge John Carson,
with whose name and reputation you are doubtless familiar, as who
is not?

"After the grand old man died, mother and I came to California,
where I attended public schools and later entered a small college
at Claremont, which is noted for its high scholastic standing and
the superior personnel of both its faculty and student body.

"Shortly after my graduation the third and greatest tragedy of
my life occurred—my mother died. I was absolutely stunned by
this blow. Life seemed to hold no further interest for me. I did
not care to live, yet I would not take my own life. As an
alternative I embarked upon a life of recklessness. With a certain
goal in mind, I learned to fly. I changed my name and became a
stunt man in pictures.

"I did not have to work. Through my mother I had inherited a
considerable fortune from my great-grandfather, John Carson; so
great a fortune that only a spendthrift could squander the income.
I mention this only because the venture I am undertaking requires
considerable capital, and I wish you to know that I am amply able
to finance it without help.

"Not only did life in Hollywood bore me, but here in Southern
California were too many reminders of the loved one I had lost. I
determined to travel, and I did. I flew all over the world. In
Germany I became interested in rocket cars and financed several.
Here my idea was born. There was nothing original about it except
that I intended to carry it to a definite conclusion. I would
travel by rocket to another planet.

"My studies had convinced me that of all the planets Mars alone
offered presumptive evidence of habitability for creatures similar
to ourselves. I was at the same time convinced that if I succeeded
in reaching Mars the probability of my being able to return to
earth was remote. Feeling that I must have some reason for
embarking upon such a venture, other than selfishness, I determined
to seek out some one with whom I could communicate in the event
that I succeeded. Subsequently it occurred to me that this might
also afford the means for launching a second expedition, equipped
to make the return journey, for I had no doubt but that there would
be many adventurous spirits ready to undertake such an excursion
once I had proved it feasible.

"For over a year I have been engaged in the construction of a
gigantic rocket on Guadalupe Island, off the west coast of Lower
California. The Mexican government has given me every assistance,
and today everything is complete to the last detail. I am ready to
start at any moment."

As he ceased speaking, he suddenly faded from view. The chair in
which he had been sitting was empty. There was no one in the room
but myself. I was stunned, almost terrified. I recalled what
Rothmund had said about the effect of the narcotics upon my
mentality. I also recalled that insane people seldom realize that
they are insane. Was I insane? Cold sweat broke out upon my
forehead and the backs of my hands. I reached toward the buzzer to
summon Ralph. There is no question but that Ralph is sane. If he
had seen Carson Napier and shown him into my study—what a
relief that would be!

But before my finger touched the button Ralph entered the room.
There was a puzzled expression on his face. "Mr. Napier is back
again," he said, and then he added, "I didn't know he had left. I
just heard him talking to you."

I breathed a sigh of relief as I wiped the perspiration from my
face and hands; if I was crazy, so was Ralph. "Bring him in," I
said, "and this time you stay here."

When Napier entered there was a questioning look in his eyes.
"Do you fully grasp the situation as far as I have explained it?"
he asked, as though he had not been out of the room at all.

"Yes, but—" I started.

"Wait, please," he requested. "I know what you are going to say,
but let me apologize first and explain. I have not been here
before. That was my final test. If you are confident that you saw
me and talked to me and can recall what I said to you as I sat
outside in my car, then you and I can communicate just as freely
and easily when I am on Mars."

"But," interjected Rothmund, "you were here. Didn't I
shake hands with you when you came in, and talk to you?"

"You thought you did," replied Napier.

"Who's loony now?" I inquired inelegantly, but to this day
Rothmund insists that we played a trick on him.

"How do you know he's here now, then?" he asked.

"I don't," I admitted.

"I am, this time," laughed Napier. "Let's see; how far had I
gotten?"

"You were saying that you were all ready to start, had your
rocket set up on Guadalupe Island," I reminded him.

"Right! I see you got it all. Now, as briefly as possible, I'll
outline what I hope you will find it possible to do for me. I have
come to you for several reasons, the more important of which are
your interest in Mars, your profession (the results of my
experiment must be recorded by an experienced writer), and your
reputation for integrity—I have taken the liberty of
investigating you most thoroughly. I wish you to record and publish
the messages you receive from me and to administer my estate during
my absence."

"I shall be glad to do the former, but I hesitate to accept the
responsibility of the latter assignment," I demurred.

"I have already arranged a trust that will give you ample
protection," he replied in a manner that precluded further
argument. I saw that he was a young man who brooked no obstacles;
in fact I think he never admitted the existence of an obstacle. "As
for your remuneration," he continued, "you may name your own
figure."

I waved a deprecatory hand. "It will be a pleasure," I assured
him.

"It may take a great deal of your time," interjected Ralph, "and
your time is valuable."

"That suits me perfectly," I said, for I detest business and
everything connected with it.

"Now, to get back to the more important and far more interesting
phases of our discussion; what is your reaction to the plan as a
whole?"

"Mars is a long way from earth," I suggested; "Venus is nine or
ten million miles closer, and a million miles are a million
miles."

"Yes, and I would prefer going to Venus," he replied. "Enveloped
in clouds, its surface forever invisible to man, it presents a
mystery that intrigues the imagination; but recent astronomical
research suggests conditions there inimical to the support of any
such life as we know on earth. It has been thought by some that,
held in the grip of the Sun since the era of her pristine fluidity,
she always presents the same face to him, as does the Moon to
earth. If such is the case, the extreme heat of one hemisphere and
the extreme cold of the other would preclude life.

"Even if the suggestion of Sir James Jeans is borne out by fact,
each of her days and nights is several times as long as ours on
earth, these long nights having a temperature of thirteen degrees
below zero, Fahrenheit, and the long days a correspondingly high
temperature."

"Yet even so, life might have adapted itself to such
conditions," I contended; "man exists in equatorial heat and arctic
cold."

"But not without oxygen," said Napier. "St. John has estimated
that the amount of oxygen above the cloud envelope that surrounds
Venus is less than one tenth of one per cent of the terrestrial
amount. After all, we have to bow to the superior judgment of such
men as Sir James Jeans, who says, 'The evidence, for what it is
worth, goes to suggest that Venus, the only planet in the solar
system outside Mars and the earth on which life could possibly
exist, possesses no vegetation and no oxygen for higher forms of
life to breathe,' which definitely limits my planetary exploration
to Mars."

We discussed his plans during the remainder of the day and well
into the night, and early the following morning he left for
Guadalupe Island in his Sikorsky amphibian. I have not seen him
since, at least in person, yet, through the marvelous medium of
telepathy, I have communicated with him continually and seen him
amid strange, unearthly surroundings that have been graphically
photographed upon the retina of my mind's eye. Thus I am the medium
through which the remarkable adventures of Carson Napier are being
recorded on earth; but I am only that, like a typewriter or a
dictaphone--the story that follows is his.

As I set my ship down in the sheltered
cove along the shore of desolate Guadalupe a trifle over four hours
after I left Tarzana the little Mexican steamer I had chartered to
transport my men, materials, and supplies from the mainland rode
peacefully at anchor in the tiny harbor, while on the shore,
waiting to welcome me, were grouped the laborers, mechanics, and
assistants who had worked with such whole-hearted loyalty for long
months in preparation for this day. Towering head and shoulders
above the others loomed Jimmy Welsh, the only American among
them.

I taxied in close to shore and moored the ship to a buoy, while
the men launched a dory and rowed out to get me. I had been absent
less than a week, most of which had been spent in Guaymas awaiting
the expected letter from Tarzana, but so exuberantly did they greet
me, one might have thought me a long-lost brother returned from the
dead, so dreary and desolate and isolated is Guadalupe to those who
must remain upon her lonely shores for even a brief interval
between contacts with the mainland.

Perhaps the warmth of their greeting may have been enhanced by a
desire to conceal their true feelings. We had been together
constantly for months, warm friendships had sprung up between us,
and tonight we were to separate with little likelihood that they
and I should ever meet again. This was to be my last day on earth;
after today I should be as dead to them as though three feet of
earth covered my inanimate corpse.

It is possible that my own sentiments colored my interpretation
of theirs, for I am frank to confess that I had been apprehending
this last moment as the most difficult of the whole adventure. I
have come in contact with the peoples of many countries, but I
recall none with more lovable qualities than Mexicans who have not
been contaminated by too close contact with the intolerance and
commercialism of Americans. And then there was Jimmy Welsh. It was
going to be like parting with a brother when I said good-bye to
him. For months he had been begging to go with me; and I knew that
he would continue to beg up to the last minute, but I could not
risk a single life unnecessarily.

We all piled into the trucks that we had used to transport
supplies and materials from the shore to the camp, which lay inland
a few miles, and bumped over our makeshift road to the little
table-land where the giant torpedo lay upon its mile long
track.

"Everything is ready," said Jimmy. "We polished off the last
details this morning. Every roller on the track has been inspected
by at least a dozen men, we towed the old crate back and forth over
the full length of the track three times with the truck, and then
re-packed all the rollers with grease. Three of us have checked
over every item of equipment and supplies individually; we've done
about everything but fire the rockets; and now we're ready to
go—you are going to take me along, aren't you,
Car?"

I shook my head. "Please don't, Jimmy," I begged; "I have a
perfect right to gamble with my own life, but not with yours; so
forget it. But I am going to do something for you," I added, "just
as a token of my appreciation of the help you've given me and all
that sort of rot. I'm going to give you my ship to remember me
by."

He was grateful, of course, but still he could not hide his
disappointment in not being allowed to accompany me, which was
evidenced by an invidious comparison he drew between the ceiling of
the Sikorsky and that of the old crate, as he had affectionately
dubbed the great torpedo-like rocket that was to bear me out into
space in a few hours.

"A thirty-five million mile ceiling," he mourned dolefully;
"think of it! Mars for a ceiling!"

"And may I hit the ceiling!" I exclaimed, fervently.

The laying of the track upon which the torpedo was to take off
had been the subject of a year of calculation and consultation. The
day of departure had been planned far ahead and the exact point at
which Mars would rise above the eastern horizon on that night
calculated, as well as the time; then it was necessary to make
allowances for the rotation of the earth and the attraction of the
nearer heavenly bodies. The track was then laid in accordance with
these calculations. It was constructed with a very slight drop in
the first three quarters of a mile and then rose gradually at an
angle of two and one half degrees from horizontal.

A speed of four and one half miles per second at the take-off
would be sufficient to neutralize gravity; to overcome it, I must
attain a speed of 6.93 miles per second. To allow a sufficient
factor of safety I had powered the torpedo to attain a speed of
seven miles per second at the end of the runway, which I purposed
stepping up to ten miles per second while passing through the
earth's atmosphere. What my speed would be through space was
problematical, but I based all my calculations on the theory that
it would not deviate much from the speed at which I left the
earth's atmosphere, until I came within the influence of the
gravitational pull of Mars.

The exact instant at which to make the start had also caused me
considerable anxiety. I had calculated it again and again, but
there were so many factors to be taken into consideration that I
had found it expedient to have my figures checked and rechecked by
a well-known physicist and an equally prominent astronomer. Their
deductions tallied perfectly withmine--the torpedo must start upon
its journey toward Mars some time before the red planet rose above
the eastern horizon. The trajectory would be along a constantly
flattening arc, influenced considerably at first by the earth's
gravitational pull, which would decrease inversely as the square of
the distance attained. As the torpedo left the earth's surface on a
curved tangent, its departure must be so nicely timed that when it
eventually escaped the pull of the earth its nose would be directed
toward Mars.

On paper, these figures appeared most convincing; but, as the
moment approached for my departure, I must confess to a sudden
realization that they were based wholly upon theory, and I was
struck with the utter folly of my mad venture.

For a moment I was aghast. The enormous torpedo, with its sixty
tons, lying there at the end of its mile long track, loomed above
me, the semblance of a gargantuan coffin—my coffin, in which
I was presently to be dashed to earth, or to the bottom of the
Pacific, or cast out into space to wander there to the end of time.
I was afraid. I admit it, but it was not so much the fear of death
as the effect of the sudden realization of the stupendousness of
the cosmic forces against which I had pitted my puny powers that
temporarily unnerved me.

Then Jimmy spoke to me. "Let's have a last look at things inside
the old crate before you shove off," he suggested, and my
nervousness and my apprehensions vanished beneath the spell of his
quiet tones and his matter-of-fact manner. I was myself again.

Together we inspected the cabin, where are located the controls,
a wide and comfortable berth, a table, a chair, writing materials,
and a well-stocked bookshelf. Behind the cabin is a small galley
and just behind the galley a storeroom containing canned and
dehydrated foods sufficient to last me a year. Back of this is a
small battery room containing storage batteries for lighting,
heating, and cooking, a dynamo, and a gas engine. The extreme stern
compartment is filled with rockets and the intricate mechanical
device by which they are fed to the firing chambers by means of the
controls in the cabin. Forward of the main cabin is a large
compartment in which are located the water and oxygen tanks, as
well as a quantity of odds and ends necessary either to my safety
or comfort.

Everything, it is needless to say, is fastened securely against
the sudden and terrific stress that must accompany the take-off.
Once out in space, I anticipate no sense of motion, but the start
is going to be rather jarring. To absorb, as much as possible, the
shock of the take-off, the rocket consists of two torpedoes, a
smaller torpedo within a larger one, the former considerably
shorter than the latter and consisting of several sections, each
one comprising one of the compartments I have described. Between
the inner and outer shells and between each two compartments is
installed a system of ingenious hydraulic shock absorbers designed
to more or less gradually overcome the inertia of the inner torpedo
during the take-off. I trust that it functions properly.

In addition to these precautions against disaster at the start,
the chair in which I shall sit before the controls is not only
heavily overstuffed but is secured to a track or framework that is
equipped with shock absorbers. Furthermore, there are means whereby
I may strap myself securely into the chair before taking off.

I have neglected nothing essential to my safety, upon which
depends the success of my project.

Following our final inspection of the interior, Jimmy and I
clambered to the top of the torpedo for a last inspection of the
parachutes, which I hope will sufficiently retard the speed of the
rocket after it enters the atmosphere of Mars to permit me to bail
out with my own parachute in time to make a safe landing. The main
parachutes are in a series of compartments running the full length
of the top of the torpedo. To explain them more clearly, I may say
that they are a continuous series of batteries of parachutes, each
battery consisting of a number of parachutes of increasing diameter
from the uppermost, which is the smallest. Each battery is in an
individual compartment, and each compartment is covered by a
separate hatch that can be opened at the will of the operator by
controls in the cabin. Each parachute is anchored to the torpedo by
a separate cable. I expect about one half of them to be torn loose
while checking the speed of the torpedo sufficiently to permit the
others to hold and further retard it to a point where I may safely
open the doors and jump with my own parachute and oxygen tank.

The moment for departure was approaching. Jimmy and I had
descended to the ground and the most difficult ordeal now faced
me—that of saying good-bye to these loyal friends and
co-workers. We did not say much, we were too filled with emotion,
and there was not a dry eye among us. Without exception none of the
Mexican laborers could understand why the nose of the torpedo was
not pointed straight up in the air if my intended destination were
Marte. Nothing could convince them that I would not shoot
out a short distance and make a graceful nose dive into the
Pacific—that is, if I started at all, which many of them
doubted.

There was a handclasp all around, and then I mounted the ladder
leaning against the side of the torpedo and entered it. As I closed
the door of the outer shell, I saw my friends piling into the
trucks and pulling away, for I had given orders that no one should
be within a mile of the rocket when I took off, fearing, as I did,
the effect upon them of the terrific explosion that must accompany
the take-off. Securing the outer door with its great vaultlike
bolts, I closed the inner door and fastened it; then I took my seat
before the controls and buckled the straps that held me to the
chair.

I glanced at my watch. It lacked nine minutes of the zero hour.
In nine minutes I should be on my way out into the great void, or
in nine minutes I should be dead. If all did not go well, the
disaster would follow within a fraction of a split second after I
touched the first firing control.

Seven minutes! My throat felt dry and parched; I wanted a drink
of water, but there was no time.

Four minutes! Thirty-five million miles are a lot of miles, yet
I planned on spanning them in between forty and forty-five
days.

Two minutes! I inspected the oxygen gauge and opened the valve a
trifle wider.

One minute! I thought of my mother and wondered if she were way
out there somewhere waiting for me.

I turned the pointer! There was a muffled roar. The torpedo
leaped forward. I was off!

I knew that the take-off was a success. I glanced through the
port at my side at the instant that the torpedo started, but so
terrific was its initial speed that I saw only a confused blur as
the landscape rushed past. I was thrilled and delighted by the ease
and perfection with which the take-off had been accomplished, and I
must admit that I was not a little surprised by the almost
negligible effects that were noticeable in the cabin. I had had the
sensation as of a giant hand pressing me suddenly back against the
upholstery of my chair but that had passed almost at once, and now
there was no sensation different from that which one might
experience sitting in an easy chair in a comfortable drawing-room
on terra firma.

There was no sensation of motion after the first few seconds
that were required to pass through the earth's atmosphere, and now
that I had done all that lay within my power to do. I could only
leave the rest to momentum, gravitation, and fate. Releasing the
straps that held me to the chair, I moved about the cabin to look
through the various ports, of which there were several in the
sides, keel, and top of the torpedo Space was a black void dotted
with countless points of light. The earth I could not see, for it
lay directly astern; far ahead was Mars. All seemed well. I
switched on the electric lights, and seating myself at the table,
made the first entries in the log; then I checked over various
computations of time and distances.

My calculations suggested that in about three hours from the
take-off the torpedo would be moving almost directly toward Mars;
and from time to time I took observations through the wide-angle
telescopic periscope that is mounted flush with the upper surface
of the torpedo's shell, but the results were not entirely
reassuring. In two hours Mars was dead ahead—the arc of the
trajectory was not flattening as it should. I became apprehensive.
What was wrong? Where had our careful computations erred?

I left the periscope and gazed down through the main keel port.
Below and ahead was the Moon, a gorgeous spectacle as viewed
through the clear void of space from a distance some seventy-two
thousand miles less than I had ever seen it before and with no
earthly atmosphere to reduce visibility. Tycho, Plato, and
Copernicus stood out in bold relief upon the brazen disc of the
great satellite, deepening by contrast the shadows of Mare
Serenitatis and Mare Tranquilitatis. The rugged peaks of the
Apennine and the Altai lay revealed as distinctly as I had ever
seen them through the largest telescope. I was thrilled, but I was
distinctly worried, too.

Three hours later I was less than fifty-nine thousand miles from
the Moon; where its aspect had been gorgeous before, it now
beggared description, but my apprehension had cause to increase in
proportion; I might say, as the square of its increasing
gorgeousness. Through the periscope I had watched the arc of my
trajectory pass through the plane of Mars and drop below it. I knew
quite definitely then that I could never reach my goal. I tried not
to think of the fate that lay ahead of me; but, instead, sought to
discover the error that had wrought this disaster.

For an hour I checked over various calculations, but could
discover nothing that might shed light on the cause of my
predicament; then I switched off the lights and looked down through
the keel port to have a closer view of the Moon. It was not there!
Stepping to the port side of the cabin, I looked through one of the
heavy circular glasses out into the void of space. For an instant I
was horror stricken; apparently just off the port bow loomed an
enormous world. It was the Moon, less than twenty-three thousand
miles away, and I was hurtling toward it at the rate of thirty-six
thousand miles an hour!

I leaped to the periscope, and in the next few seconds I
accomplished some lightning mental calculating that must constitute
an all-time record. I watched the deflection of our course in the
direction of the Moon, following it across the lens of the
periscope, I computed the distance to the Moon and the speed of the
torpedo, and I came to the conclusion that I had better than a
fighting chance of missing the great orb. I had little fear of
anything but a direct hit, since our speed was so great that the
attraction of the Moon could not hold us if we missed her even by a
matter of feet; but it was quite evident that it had affected our
flight, and with this realization came the answer to the question
that had been puzzling me.

To my mind flashed the printer's story of the first perfect
book. It had been said that no book had ever before been published
containing not a single error. A great publishing house undertook
to publish such a book. The galley proofs were read and reread by a
dozen different experts, the page proofs received the same careful
scrutiny. At last the masterpiece was ready for the
press—errorless: It was printed and bound and sent out to the
public, and then it was discovered that the title had been
misspelled on the title page. With all our careful calculation,
with all our checking and re-checking, we had overlooked the
obvious; we had not taken the Moon into consideration at all.

Explain it if you can; I cannot. It was just one of those
things, as people say when a good team loses to a poor one; it was
a break, and a bad one. How bad it was I did not even try to
conjecture at the time; I just sat at the periscope watching the
Moon racing toward us. As we neared it, it presented the most
gorgeous spectacle that I have ever witnessed. Each mountain peak
and crater stood out in vivid detail. Even the great height of
summits over twenty-five thousand feet appeared distinguishable to
me, though imagination must have played a major part in the
illusion, since I was looking down upon them from above.

Suddenly I realized that the great sphere was passing rapidly
from the field of the periscope, and I breathed a sigh of
relief—we were not going to score a clean hit, we were going
to pass by.

I returned then to the porthole. The Moon lay just ahead and a
little to the left. It was no longer a great sphere; it was a world
that filled my whole range of vision. Against its black horizon I
saw titanic peaks; below me huge craters yawned. I stood with God
on high and looked down upon a dead world.

Our transit of the Moon required a little less than four
minutes; I timed it carefully that I might check our speed. How
close we came I may only guess; perhaps five thousand feet above
the tallest peaks, but it was close enough. The pull of the Moon's
gravitation had definitely altered our course, but owing to our
speed we had eluded her clutches. Now we were racing away from her,
but to what?

The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is twenty-five and a half
million million miles from earth. Write that on your
typewriter—25,500,000,000,000 miles. But why trifle with
short distances like this? There was little likelihood that I
should visit Alpha Centauri with all the wide range of space at my
command and many more interesting places to go. I knew that I had
ample room in which to wander, since science has calculated the
diameter of space to be eighty-four thousand million light years,
which, when one reflects that light travels at the rate of one
hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second, should satisfy the
wanderlust of the most inveterate roamer.

However, I was not greatly concerned with any of these
distances, as I had food and water for only a year, during which
time the torpedo might travel slightly more than three hundred
fifteen million miles. Even if it reached our near neighbor, Alpha
Centauri, I should not then be greatly interested in the event, as
I should have been dead for over eighty thousand years. Such is the
immensity of the universe!

During the next twenty-four hours the course of the torpedo
nearly paralleled the Moon's orbit around the earth. Not only had
the pull of the Moon deflected its course, but now it seemed
evident that the earth had seized us and that we were doomed to
race through eternity around her, a tiny, second satellite. But I
did not wish to be a moon, certainly not an insignificant moon that
in all probability might not be picked up by even the largest
telescope.

The next month was the most trying of my life. It seems the
height of egotism even to mention my life in the face of the
stupendous cosmic forces that engulfed it; but it was the only life
I had and I was fond of it, and the more imminent seemed the moment
when it should be snuffed out, the better I liked it.

At the end of the second day it was quite apparent that we had
eluded the grip of the earth. I cannot say that I was elated at the
discovery. My plan to visit Mars was ruined. I should have been
glad to return to earth. If I could have landed safely on Mars, I
certainly could have landed safely on earth. But there was another
reason why I should have been glad to have returned to earth, a
reason that loomed, large and terrible, ahead—the Sun. We
were heading straight for the Sun now. Once in the grip of that
mighty power, nothing could affect our destiny; we were doomed. For
three months I must await the inevitable end, before plunging into
that fiery furnace. Furnace is an inadequate word by which to
suggest the Sun's heat, which is reputedly from thirty to sixty
million degrees at the center, a fact which should not have
concerned me greatly, since I did not anticipate reaching the
center.

The days dragged on, or, I should say, the long
night—there were no days, other than the record that I kept
of the passing hours. I read a great deal. I made no entries in the
log. Why write something that was presently to be plunged into the
Sun and consumed? I experimented in the galley, attempting fancy
cooking. I ate a great deal; it helped to pass the time away, and I
enjoyed my meals.

On the thirtieth day I was scanning space ahead when I saw a
gorgeous, shimmering crescent far to the right of our course; but I
must confess that I was not greatly interested in sights of any
sort. In sixty days I should be in the Sun. Long before that,
however, the increasing heat would have destroyed me. The end was
approaching rapidly.

The psychological effects of an experience
such as that through which I had been passing must be considerable,
and even though they could be neither weighed nor measured, I was
yet conscious of changes that had taken place in me because of
them. For thirty days I had been racing alone through space toward
absolute annihilation, toward an end that would probably not leave
a single nucleus of the atoms that compose me an electron to carry
on with, I had experienced the ultimate in solitude, and the result
had been to deaden my sensibilities; doubtless a wise provision of
nature.

Even the realization that the splendid crescent, looming
enormously off the starboard bow of the torpedo, was Venus failed
to excite me greatly. What if I were to approach Venus more closely
than any other human being of all time! It meant nothing. Were I to
see God, himself, even that would mean nothing. It became apparent
that the value of what we see is measurable only by the size of our
prospective audience. Whatever I saw, who might never have an
audience, was without value.

Nevertheless, more to pass away the time than because I was
particularly interested in the subject, I began to make some rough
calculations. These indicated that I was about eight hundred
sixty-five thousand miles from the orbit of Venus and that I should
cross it in about twenty-four hours. I could not, however, compute
my present distance from the planet accurately. I only knew that it
appeared very close. When I say close, I mean relatively. The earth
was some twenty-five million miles away, the Sun about sixty-eight
million, so that an object as large as Venus, at a distance of one
or two million miles, appeared close.

As Venus travels in her orbit at the rate of nearly twenty-two
miles per second, or over one million six hundred thousand miles in
a terrestrial day, it appeared evident to me that she would cross
my path some time within the next twenty-four hours.

It occurred to me that, passing closely, as was unavoidable, she
might deflect the course of the torpedo and save me from the Sun;
but I knew this to be a vain hope. Undoubtedly, the path of the
torpedo would be bent, but the Sun would not relinquish his prey.
With these thoughts, my apathy returned, and I lost interest in
Venus.

Selecting a book, I lay down on my bed to read. The interior of
the cabin was brightly illuminated. I am extravagant with
electricity. I have the means of generating it for eleven more
months; but I shall not need it after a few weeks, so why should I
be parsimonious?

I read for a few hours, but as reading in bed always makes me
sleepy, I eventually succumbed. When I awoke, I lay for a few
minutes in luxurious ease. I might be racing toward extinction at
the rate of thirty-six thousand miles an hour, but I, myself, was
unhurried. I recalled the beautiful spectacle that Venus had
presented when I had last observed her and decided to have another
look at her. Stretching languorously, I arose and stepped to one of
the starboard port-holes.

The picture framed by the casing of that circular opening was
gorgeous beyond description. Apparently less than half as far away
as before, and twice as large, loomed the mass of Venus outlined by
an aureole of light where the Sun, behind her, illuminated her
cloudy envelope and lighted to burning brilliance a thin crescent
along the edge nearest me.

I looked at my watch. Twelve hours had passed since I first
discovered the planet, and now, at last, I became excited. Venus
was apparently half as far away as it had been twelve hours ago,
and I knew that the torpedo had covered half the distance that had
separated us from her orbit at that time. A collision was possible,
it even seemed within the range of probability that I should be
dashed to the surface of this inhospitable, lifeless world.

Well, what of it? Am I not already doomed? What difference can
it make to me if the end comes a few weeks sooner than I had
anticipated? Yet I was excited. I cannot say that I felt fear. I
have no fear of death—that left me when my mother died; but
now that the great adventure loomed so close I was overwhelmed by
contemplation of it and the great wonder that it induced. What
would follow?

The long hours dragged on. It seemed incredible to me,
accustomed though I am to thinking in units of terrific speed, that
the torpedo and Venus were racing toward the same point in her
orbit at such inconceivable velocities, the one at the rate of
thirty-six thousand miles per hour, the other at over sixty-seven
thousand.

It was now becoming difficult to view the planet through the
side port, as she moved steadily closer and closer to our path. I
went to the periscope--she was gliding majestically within its
range. I knew that at that moment the torpedo was less than
thirty-six thousand miles, less than an hour, from the path of the
planet's orbit, and there could be no doubt now but that she had
already seized us in her grasp. We were destined to make a deaf
hit. Even under the circumstances I could not restrain a smile at
the thought of the marksmanship that this fact revealed. I had
aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the
all-time cosmic record for poor shots.

Even though I did not shrink from death, even though the world's
best astronomers have assured us that Venus must be unfitted to
support human life, that where her surface is not unutterably hot
it is unutterably cold, even though she be oxygenless, as they
aver, yet the urge to live that is born with each of us compelled
me to make the same preparations to land that I should have had I
successfully reached my original goal, Mars.

Slipping into a fleece-lined suit of coveralls, I donned goggles
and a fleece-lined helmet; then I adjusted the oxygen tank that was
designed to hang in front of me, lest it foul the parachute, and
which can be automatically jettisoned in the event that I reach an
atmosphere that will support life, for it would be an awkward and
dangerous appendage to be cumbered with while landing. Finally, I
adjusted my chute.

I glanced at my watch. If my calculations have been correct, we
should strike in about fifteen minutes. Once more I returned to the
periscope.

The sight that met my eyes was awe inspiring. We were plunging
toward a billowing mass of black clouds. It was like chaos on the
dawn of creation. The gravitation of the planet had seized us. The
floor of the cabin was no longer beneath me—I was standing on
the forward bulkhead now; but this condition I had anticipated when
I designed the torpedo. We were diving nose on toward the planet.
In space there had been neither up nor down, but now there was a
very definite down.

From where I stood I could reach the controls, and beside me was
the door in the side of the torpedo. I released three batteries of
parachutes and opened the door in the wall of the inner torpedo.
There was a noticeable jar, as though the parachutes had opened and
temporarily checked the speed of the torpedo. This must mean that I
had entered an atmosphere of some description and that there was
not a second to waste.

With a single movement of a lever I loosed the remaining
parachutes; then I turned to the outer door. Its bolts were
controlled by a large wheel set in the center of the door and were
geared to open quickly and with ease. I adjusted the mouthpiece of
the oxygen line across my lips and quickly spun the wheel.

Simultaneously the door flew open and the air pressure within
the torpedo shot me out into space. My right hand grasped the rip
cord of my chute; but I waited. I looked about for the torpedo. It
was racing almost parallel with me, all its parachutes distended
above it. Just an instant's glimpse I had of it, and then it dove
into the cloud mass and was lost to view; but what a weirdly
magnificent spectacle it had presented in that brief instant!

Safe now from any danger of fouling with the torpedo, I jerked
the rip cord of my parachute just as the clouds swallowed me.
Through my fleece-lined suit I felt the bitter cold; like a dash of
ice water the cold clouds slapped me in the face; then, to my
relief, the chute opened, and I fell more slowly.

Down, down, down I dropped. I could not even guess the duration,
nor the distance. It was very dark and very wet, like sinking into
the depths of the ocean without feeling the pressure of the water.
My thoughts during those long moments were such as to baffle
description. Perhaps the oxygen made me a little drunk; I do not
know. I felt exhilarated and intensely eager to solve the great
mystery beneath me. The thought that I was about to die did not
concern me so much as what I might see before I died. I was about
to land on Venus—the first human being in all the world to
see the face of the veiled planet.

Suddenly I emerged into a cloudless space; but far below me were
what appeared in the darkness to be more clouds, recalling to my
mind the often advanced theory of the two cloud envelopes of Venus.
As I descended, the temperature rose gradually, but it was still
cold.

As I entered the second cloud bank, there was a very noticeable
rise in temperature the farther I fell. I shut off the oxygen
supply and tried breathing through my nose. By inhaling deeply I
discovered that I could take in sufficient oxygen to support life,
and an astronomical theory was shattered. Hope flared within me
like a beacon on a fog-hid landing field.

As I floated gently downward, I presently became aware of a
faint luminosity far below. What could it be? There were many
obvious reasons why it could not be sunlight; sunlight would not
come from below, and, furthermore, it was night on this hemisphere
of the planet. Naturally many weird conjectures raced through my
mind. I wondered if this could be the light from an incandescent
world, but immediately discarded that explanation as erroneous,
knowing that the heat from an incandescent world would long since
have consumed me. Then it occurred to me that it might be refracted
light from that portion of the cloud envelope illuminated by the
Sun, yet if such were the case, it seemed obvious that the clouds
about me should be luminous, which they were not.

There seemed only one practical solution. It was the solution
that an earth man would naturally arrive at. Being what I am, a
highly civilized creature from a world already far advanced by
science and invention, I attributed the source of this light to
these twin forces of superior intelligence. I could only account
for that faint glow by attributing it to the reflection upon the
under side of the cloud mass of artificial light produced by
intelligent creatures upon the surface of this world toward which I
was slowly settling.

I wondered what these beings would be like, and if my excitement
grew as I anticipated the wonders that were soon to be revealed to
my eyes, I believe that it was a pardonable excitement, under the
circumstances. Upon the threshold of such an adventure who would
not have been moved to excitement by contemplation of the
experiences awaiting him?

Now I removed the mouthpiece of the oxygen tube entirely and
found that I could breathe easily. The light beneath me was
increasing gradually. About me I thought I saw vague, dark shapes
among the cloud masses. Shadows, perhaps, but of what? I detached
the oxygen tank and let it fall. I distinctly heard it strike
something an instant after I had released it. Then a shadow loomed
darkly beneath me, and an instant later my feet struck something
that gave beneath them.

I dropped into a mass of foliage and grasped wildly for support.
A moment later I began to fall more rapidly and guessed what had
happened; the parachute had been uptilted by contact with the
foliage. I clutched at leaves and branches, fruitlessly, and then I
was brought to a sudden stop; evidently the chute had fouled
something. I hoped that it would hold until I found a secure
resting place.

As I groped about in the dark, my hand finally located a sturdy
branch, and a moment later I was astride it, my back to the bole of
a large tree--another theory gone the ignoble path of countless
predecessors; it was evident that there was vegetation on Venus. At
least there was one tree; I could vouch for that, as I was sitting
in it, and doubtless the black shadows I had passed were other,
taller trees.

Having found secure lodgment, I divested myself of my parachute
after salvaging some of its ropes and the straps from the harness,
which I thought I might find helpful in descending the tree.
Starting at the top of a tree, in darkness and among clouds, one
may not be positive what the tree is like nearer the ground. I also
removed my goggles. Then I commenced to descend. The girth of the
tree was enormous, but the branches grew sufficiently close
together to permit me to find safe footing.

I did not know how far I had fallen through the second cloud
stratum before I lodged in the tree nor how far I had descended the
tree, but all together it must have been close to two thousand
feet; yet I was still in the clouds. Could the entire atmosphere of
Venus be forever fog laden? I hoped not, for it was a dreary
prospect.

The light from below had increased a little as I descended, but
not much; it was still dark about me. I continued to descend. It
was tiresome work and not without danger, this climbing down an
unfamiliar tree in a fog, at night, toward an unknown world. But I
could not remain where I was, and there was nothing above to entice
me upward; so I continued to descend.

What a strange trick fate had played me. I had wanted to visit
Venus, but had discarded the idea when assured by my astronomer
friends that the planet could not support either animal or
vegetable life. I had started for Mars, and now, fully ten days
before I had hoped to reach the red planet, I was on Venus,
breathing perfectly good air among the branches of a tree that
evidently dwarfed the giant Sequoias.

The illumination was increasing rapidly now the clouds were
thinning; through breaks I caught glimpses far below, glimpses of
what appeared to be an endless vista of foliage, softly
moonlit—but Venus had no moon. In that, insofar as the
seeming moonlight was concerned, I could fully concur with the
astronomers. This illumination came from no moon, unless Venus's
satellite lay beneath her inner envelope of clouds, which was
preposterous.

A moment later I emerged entirely from the cloud bank, but
though I searched in all directions, I saw nothing but foliage,
above, around, below me, yet I could see far down into that abyss
of leaves. In the soft light I could not determine the color of the
foliage, but I was sure that it was not green; it was some light,
delicate shade of another color.

I had descended another thousand feet since I had emerged from
the clouds, and I was pretty well exhausted (the month of
inactivity and overeating had softened me), when I saw just below
me what appeared to be a causeway leading from the tree I was
descending to another adjacent. I also discovered that from just
below where I clung the limbs had been cut away from the tree to a
point below the causeway. Here were two startling and unequivocal
evidences of the presence of intelligent beings. Venus was
inhabited! But by what? What strange, arboreal creatures built
causeways high among these giant trees? Were they a species of
monkey-man? Were they of a high or low order of intelligence? How
would they receive me?

At this juncture in my vain speculations I was startled by a
noise above me. Something was moving in the branches overhead. The
sound was coming nearer, and it seemed to me that it was being made
by something of considerable size and weight, but perhaps, I
realized, that conjecture was the child of my imagination. However,
I felt most uncomfortable. I was unarmed. I have never carried
weapons. My friends had urged a perfect arsenal upon me before I
embarked upon my adventure, but I had argued that if I arrived on
Mars unarmed it would be prima facie evidence of my friendly
intentions, and even if my reception were warlike, I should be no
worse off, since I could not hope, single-handed, to conquer a
world, no matter how well armed I were.

Suddenly, above me, to the crashing of some heavy body through
the foliage were added hideous screams and snarls; and in the
terrifying dissonance I recognized the presence of more than a
single creature. Was I being pursued by all the fearsome denizens
of this Venusian forest!

Perhaps my nerves were slightly unstrung and who may blame them
if they were, after what I had passed through so recently and
during the long, preceding months They were not entirely shattered,
however, and I could still appreciate the fact that night noises
often multiply themselves in a most disconcerting way. I have heard
coyotes yapping and screaming around my camp on Arizona nights
when, but for the actual knowledge that there were but one or two
of them, I could have sworn that there were a hundred, had I
trusted only to my sense of hearing.

But in this instance I was quite positive that the voices of
more than a single beast were mingling to produce the horrid din
that, together with the sound of their passage, was definitely and
unquestionably drawing rapidly nearer me. Of course I did not know
that the owners of those awesome voices were pursuing me, though a
still, small voice within seemed to be assuring me that such was
the fact.

I wished that I might reach the causeway below me (I should feel
better standing squarely on two feet), but it was too far to drop
and there were no more friendly branches to give me support; then I
thought of the ropes I had salvaged from the abandoned parachute.
Quickly uncoiling them from about my waist, I looped one of them
over the branch upon which I sat, grasped both strands firmly in my
hands, and prepared to swing from my porch. Suddenly the screams
and snarling growls ceased; and then, close above me now, I heard
the noise of something descending toward me and saw the branches
shaking to its weight.

Lowering my body from the branch, I swung downward and slid the
fifteen or more feet to the causeway, and as I alighted the silence
of the great forest was again shattered by a hideous scream just
above my head. Looking up quickly, I saw a creature launching
itself toward me and just beyond it a snarling face of utter
hideousness. I caught but the briefest glimpse of it--just enough
to see that it was a face, with eyes and a mouth—then it was
withdrawn amidst the foliage.

Perhaps I only sensed that hideous vision subconsciously at the
time, for the whole scene was but a flash upon the retina of my
eye, and the other beast was in mid-air above me at the instant;
but it remained indelibly impressed upon my memory, and I was to
recall it upon a later day under circumstances so harrowing that
the mind of mortal earth man may scarce conceive them.

As I leaped back to avoid the creature springing upon me, I
still clung to one strand of the rope down which I had lowered
myself to the causeway. My grasp upon the rope was unconscious and
purely mechanical; it was in my hand, and my fist was clenched; and
as I leaped away, I dragged the rope with me. A fortuitous
circumstance, no doubt, but a most fortunate one.

The creature missed me, alighting on all fours a few feet from
me, and there it crouched, apparently slightly bewildered, and,
fortunately for me, it did not immediately charge, giving me the
opportunity to collect my wits and back slowly away, at the same
time mechanically coiling the rope in my right hand. The little,
simple things one does in moments of stress or excitement often
seem entirely beyond reason and incapable of explanation; but I
have thought that they may be dictated by a subconscious mind
reacting to the urge of self preservation. Possibly they are not
always well directed and may as often fail to be of service as not,
but then it may be possible that subconscious minds are no less
fallible than the objective mind, which is wrong far more often
than it is right. I cannot but seek for some explanation of the
urge that caused me to retain that rope, since, all unknown to me,
it was to be the slender thread upon which my life was to hang.

Silence had again descended upon the weird scene. Since the
final scream of the hideous creature that had retreated into the
foliage after this thing had leaped for me, there had been no
sound. The creature that crouched facing me seemed slightly
bewildered. I am positive now that it had not been pursuing me, but
that it itself had been the object of pursuit by the other beast
that had retreated.

In the dim half-light of the Venusian night I saw confronting me
a creature that might be conjured only in the half-delirium of some
horrid nightmare. It was about as large as a full-grown puma, and
stood upon four handlike feet that suggested that it might be
almost wholly arboreal. The front legs were much longer than the
hind, suggesting, in this respect, the hyena; but here the
similarity ceased, for the creature's furry pelt was striped
longitudinally with alternate bands of red and yellow, and its
hideous head bore no resemblance to any earthly animal. No external
ears were visible, and in the low forehead was a single large,
round eye at the end of a thick antenna about four inches long. The
jaws were powerful and armed with long, sharp fangs, while from
either side of the neck projected a powerful chela. Never have I
seen a creature so fearsomely armed for offense as was this
nameless beast of another world. With those powerful crablike
pincers it could easily have held an opponent far stronger than a
man and dragged it to those terrible jaws.

For a time it eyed me with that single, terrifying eye that
moved to and fro at the end of its antenna, and all the time its
chelae were waving slowly, opening and closing. In that brief
moment of delay I looked about me, and the first thing that I
discovered was that I stood directly in front of an opening cut in
the bole of the tree; an opening about three feet wide and over six
feet high. But the most remarkable thing about it was that it was
closed by a door; not a solid door, but one suggesting a massive
wooden grill.

As I stood contemplating it and wondering what to do, I thought
that I saw something moving behind it. Then a voice spoke to me out
of the darkness beyond the door. It sounded like a human voice,
though it spoke in a language that I could not understand. The
tones were peremptory. I could almost imagine that it said, "Who
are you, and what do you want here in the middle of the night?"

"I am a stranger," I said. "I come in peace and friendship."

Of course I knew that whatever it was behind that door, it could
not understand me; but I hoped that my tone would assure it of my
peaceful designs. There was a moment's silence and then I heard
other voices. Evidently the situation was being discussed; then I
saw that the creature facing me upon the causeway was creeping
toward me, and I turned my attention from the doorway to the
beast.

I had no weapons, nothing but a length of futile rope; but I
knew that I must do something. I could not stand there supinely and
let the creature seize and devour me without striking a blow in my
own defense. I uncoiled a portion of the rope and, more in despair
than with any hope that I could accomplish anything of a defensive
nature, flicked the end of it in the face of the advancing beast.
You have seen a boy snap a wet towel at a companion; perhaps you
have been flicked in that way, and if you have, you know that it
hurts.

Of course I did not expect to overcome my adversary by any such
means as this; to be truthful, I did not know what I did expect to
accomplish Perhaps I just felt that I must do something, and this
was the only thing that occurred to me. The result merely
demonstrated the efficiency of that single eye and the quickness of
the chelae. I snapped that rope as a ringmaster snaps a whip; but
though the rope end travelled with great speed and the act must
have been unexpected, the creature caught the rope in one of its
chelae before it reached its face. Then it hung on and sought to
drag me toward those frightful jaws.

I learned many a trick of roping from a cowboy friend of my
motion picture days, and one of these I now put into use in an
endeavor to entangle the crablike chelae Suddenly giving the rope
sufficient slack, I threw a half hitch around the chela that
gripped it, immediately following it with a second, whereupon the
creature commenced to pull desperately away. I think it was
motivated solely by an instinctive urge to pull toward its jaws
anything that was held in its chelae; but for how long it would
continue to pull away before it decided to change its tactics and
charge me, I could not even guess; and so I acted upon a sudden
inspiration and hurriedly made fast the end of the rope that I held
to one of the stout posts that supported the handrail of the
causeway; then, of a sudden, the thing charged me, roaring
furiously.

I turned and ran, hoping that I could get out of the reach of
those terrible chelae before the creature was stopped by the rope;
and this I but barely managed to do. I breathed a sigh of relief as
I saw the great body flipped completely over on its back as the
rope tautened, but the hideous scream of rage that followed left me
cold. Nor was my relief of any great duration, for as soon as the
creature had scrambled to its feet, it seized the rope in its other
chela and severed it as neatly as one might with a pair of
monstrous tinner's snips; and then it was after me again, but this
time it did not creep.

It seemed evident that my stay upon Venus was to be brief, when
suddenly the door in the tree swung open and three men leaped to
the causeway just behind the charging terror that was swiftly
driving down upon me. The leading man hurled a short, heavy spear
that sank deep into the back of my infuriated pursuer. Instantly
the creature stopped in its tracks and wheeled about to face these
new and more dangerous tormentors; and as he did so two more
spears, hurled by the companions of the first man, drove into his
chest, and with a last frightful scream, the thing dropped in its
tracks, dead.

Then the leading man came toward me. In the subdued light of the
forest he appeared no different from an earth man. He held the
point of a straight, sharp sword pointed at my vitals. Close behind
him were the other two men, each with a drawn sword.

The first man spoke to me in a stern, commanding voice, but I
shook my head to indicate that I could not understand; then he
pressed the point of his weapon against my coveralls opposite the
pit of my stomach, and jabbed. I backed away. He advanced and
jabbed at me again, and again I backed along the causeway. Now the
other two men advanced and the three of them fell to examining me,
meanwhile talking among themselves.

I could see them better now. They were about my own height and
in every detail of their visible anatomy they appeared identical
with terrestrial human beings, nor was a great deal left to my
imagination—the men were almost naked. They wore loincloths
and little else other than the belts that supported the scabbards
of their swords. Their skins appeared to be much darker than mine,
but not so dark as a negro's, and their faces were smooth and
handsome.

Several times one or another of them addressed me and I always
replied, but neither understood what the other said. Finally, after
a lengthy discussion, one of them reentered the opening in the tree
and a moment later I saw the interior of a chamber, just within the
doorway, illuminated; then one of the two remaining men motioned me
forward and pointed toward the doorway.

Understanding that he wished me to enter, I stepped forward,
and, as I passed them, they kept their sword points against my
body—they were taking no chances with me. The other man
awaited me in the center of a large room hewn from the interior of
the great tree. Beyond him were other doorways leading from this
room, doubtless into other apartments. There were chairs and a
table in the room; the walls were carved and painted; there was a
large rug upon the floor; from a small vessel depending from the
center of the ceiling a soft light illuminated the interior as
brightly as might sunlight flooding through an open window, but
there was no glare.

The other men had entered and closed the door, which they
fastened by a device that was not apparent to me at the time; then
one of them pointed to a chair and motioned me to be seated. Under
the bright light they examined me intently, and I them. My clothing
appeared to puzzle them most; they examined and discussed its
material, texture, and weave, if I could judge correctly by their
gestures and inflections.

Finding the heat unendurable in my fleece-lined coveralls, I
removed them and my leather coat and polo shirt. Each newly
revealed article aroused their curiosity and comment. My light skin
and blond hair also received their speculative attention.

Presently one of them left the chamber, and while he was absent
another removed the various articles that had lain upon the table.
These consisted of what I took to be books bound in wooden and in
leather covers, several ornaments, and a dagger in a beautifully
wrought sheath.

When the man who had left the room returned, he brought food and
drink which he placed upon the table; and by signs the three
indicated that I might eat. There were fruits and nuts in highly
polished, carved wooden bowls; there was something I took to be
bread, on a golden platter; and there was honey in a silver jug. A
tall, slender goblet contained a whitish liquid that resembled
milk. This last receptacle was a delicate, translucent ceramic of
an exquisite blue shade. These things and the appointments of the
room bespoke culture, refinement, and good taste, making the savage
apparel of their owners appear incongruous.

The fruits and nuts were unlike any with which I was familiar,
both in appearance and flavor; the bread was coarse but delicious;
and the honey, if such it were, suggested candied violets to the
taste. The milk (I can find no other earthly word to describe it)
was strong and almost pungent, yet far from unpleasant. I imagined
at the time that one might grow to be quite fond of it.

The table utensils were similar to those with which we are
familiar in civilized portions of the earth; there were hollowed
instruments with which to dip or scoop, sharp ones with which to
cut, and others with tines with which to impale. There was also a
handled pusher, which I recommend to earthly hostesses. All these
were of metal.

While I ate, the three men conversed earnestly, one or another
of them occasionally offering me more food. They seemed hospitable
and courteous, and I felt that if they were typical of the
inhabitants of Venus I should find my life here a pleasant one.
That it would not be a bed of roses, however, was attested by the
weapons that the men constantly wore; one does not carry a sword
and a dagger about with him unless he expects to have occasion to
use them, except on dress parade.

When I had finished my meal, two of the men escorted me from the
room by a rear doorway, up a flight of circular stairs, and ushered
me into a small chamber. The stairway and corridor were illuminated
by a small lamp similar to that which hung in the room where I had
eaten, and light from this lamp shone through the heavy wooden
grating of the door, into the room where I was now locked and where
my captors left me to my own devices.

Upon the floor was a soft mattress over which were spread
coverings of a silky texture. It being very warm, I removed all of
my clothing except my undershorts and lay down to sleep. I was
tired after my arduous descent of the giant tree and dozed almost
immediately. I should have been asleep at once had I not been
suddenly startled to wakefulness by a repetition of that hideous
scream with which the beast that had pursued me through the tree
had announced its rage and chagrin when I had eluded it.

However, it was not long before I fell asleep, my dozing mind
filled with a chaos of fragmentary recollections of my stupendous
adventure.

When I awoke, it was quite light in the
room, and through a window I saw the foliage of trees, lavender and
heliotrope and violet in the light of a new day. I arose and went
to the window. I saw no sign of sunlight, yet a brightness
equivalent to sunlight pervaded everything. The air was warm and
sultry. Below me I could see sections of various causeways
extending from tree to tree. On some of these I caught glimpses of
people. All the men were naked, except for loincloths, nor did I
wonder at their scant apparel, in the light of my experience of the
temperatures on Venus. There were both men and women; and all the
men were armed with swords and daggers, while the women carried
daggers only. All those whom I saw seemed to be of the same age;
there were neither children nor old people among them. All appeared
comely.

From my barred window I sought a glimpse of the ground, but as
far down as I could see there was only the amazing foliage of the
trees, lavender, heliotrope, and violet. And what trees! From my
window I could see several enormous boles fully two hundred feet in
diameter. I had thought the tree I descended a giant, but compared
with these, it was only a sapling.

As I stood contemplating the scene before me, there was a noise
at the door behind me. Turning, I saw one of my captors entering
the room. He greeted me with a few words, which I could not
understand, and a pleasant smile, that I could. I returned his
smile and said, "Good morning!"

He beckoned to me to follow him from the room, but I made signs
indicating that I wished to don my clothes first. I knew I should
be hot and uncomfortable in them; I was aware that no one I had
seen here wore any clothing, yet so powerful are the inhibitions of
custom and habit that I shrank from doing the sensible thing and
wearing only my undershorts.

At first, when he realized what I wished to do, he motioned me
to leave my clothes where they were and come with him as I was; but
eventually he gave in with another of his pleasant smiles. He was a
man of fine physique, a little shorter than I; by daylight, I could
see that his skin was about that shade of brown that a heavy sun
tan imparts to people of my own race; his eyes were dark brown, his
hair black. His appearance formed a marked contrast to my light
skin, blue eyes, and blond hair.

When I had dressed, I followed him downstairs to a room
adjoining the one I had first entered the previous night. Here the
man's two companions and two women were seated at a table on which
were a number of vessels containing food. As I entered the room the
women's eyes were turned upon me curiously; the men smiled and
greeted me as had their fellow, and one of them motioned me to a
chair. The women appraised me frankly but without boldness, and it
was evident that they were discussing me freely between themselves
and with the men. They were both uncommonly goodlooking, their
skins being a shade lighter than those of the men, while their eyes
and hair were of about the same color as those of their male
companions. Each wore a single garment of a silken material similar
to that of which my bed cover had been made and in the form of a
long sash, which was wrapped tightly around the body below the
armpits, confining the breasts. From this point it was carried half
way around the body downward to the waist, where it circled the
body again, the loose end then passing between the legs from behind
and up through the sash in front, after the manner of a G string,
the remainder falling in front to the knees.

In addition to these garments, which were beautifully
embroidered in colors, the women wore girdles from which depended
pocket pouches and sheathed daggers, and both were plentifully
adorned with ornaments such as rings, bracelets, and hair
ornaments. I could recognize gold and silver among the various
materials of which these things were fabricated, and there were
others that might have been ivory and coral; but what impressed me
most was the exquisite workmanship they displayed, and I imagined
that they were valued more for this than for the intrinsic worth of
the materials that composed them. That this conjecture might be in
accordance with fact was borne out by the presence among their
ornaments of several of the finest workmanship, obviously carved
from ordinary bone.

On the table was bread different from that which I had had the
night before, a dish that I thought might be eggs and meat baked
together, several which I could not recognize either by appearance
or taste, and the familiar milk and honey that I had encountered
before. The foods varied widely in range of flavor, so that it
would have been a difficult palate indeed that would not have found
something to its liking.

During the meal they engaged in serious discussion, and I was
certain from their glances and gestures that I was the subject of
their debate. The two girls enlivened the meal by attempting to
carry on a conversation with me, which appeared to afford them a
great deal of merriment, nor could I help joining in their
laughter, so infectious was it. Finally one of them hit upon the
happy idea of teaching me their language. She pointed to herself
and said, "Zuro," and to the other girl and said, "Alzo"; then the
men became interested, and I soon learned that the name of him who
seemed to be the head of the house, the man who had first
challenged me the preceding night, was Duran, the other two Olthar
and Kamlot.

But before I had mastered more than these few words and the
names of some of the foods on the table, breakfast was over and the
three men had conducted me from the house. As we proceeded along
the causeway that passed in front of the house of Duran, the
interest and curiosity of those we passed were instantly challenged
as their eyes fell upon me; and it was at once evident to me that I
was a type either entirely unknown on Venus or at least rare, for
my blue eyes and blond hair caused quite as much comment as my
clothing, as I could tell by their gestures and the direction of
their gaze.

We were often stopped by curious friends of my captors, or hosts
(I was not sure yet in which category they fell); but none offered
me either harm or insult, and if I were the object of their curious
scrutiny, so were they of mine. While no two of them were identical
in appearance, they were all handsome and all apparently of about
the same age. I saw no old people and no children.

Presently we approached a tree of such enormous diameter that I
could scarcely believe the testimony of my eyes when I saw it. It
was fully five hundred feet in diameter. Stripped of branches for a
hundred feet above and below the causeway, its surface was dotted
with windows and doors and encircled by wide balconies or verandas.
Before a large and elaborately carved doorway was a group of armed
men before whom we halted while Duran addressed one of their
number.

I thought at the time that he called this man Tofar, and such I
learned later was his name. He wore a necklace from which depended
a metal disc bearing a hieroglyphic in relief; otherwise he was not
accoutred differently from his companions. As he and Duran
conversed, he appraised me carefully from head to feet. Presently
he and Duran passed through the doorway into the interior of the
tree, while the others continued to examine me and question Kamlot
and Olthar.

While I waited there, I embraced the opportunity to study the
elaborate carvings that surrounded the portal, forming a frame
fully five feet wide. The motif appeared historical, and I
could easily imagine that the various scenes depicted important
events in the life of a dynasty or a nation. The workmanship was
exquisite, and it required no stretch of the imagination to believe
that each delicately carved face was the portrait of some dead or
living celebrity. There was nothing grotesque in the delineation of
the various figures, as is so often the case in work of a similar
character on earth, and only the borders that framed the whole and
separated contiguous plaques were conventional.

I was still engrossed by these beautiful examples of the wood
carver's art when Duran and Tofar returned and motioned Olthar and
Kamlot and me to follow them into the interior of the great tree.
We passed through several large chambers and along wide corridors,
all carved from the wood of the living tree, to the head of a
splendid stairway, which we descended to another level. The
chambers near the periphery of the tree received their light
through windows, while the interior chambers and corridors were
illuminated by lamps similar to those I had already seen in the
house of Duran.

Near the foot of the stairway we had descended we entered a
spacious chamber, before the doorway to which stood two men armed
with spears and swords, and before us, across the chamber, we saw a
man seated at a table near a large window. Just inside the doorway
we halted, my companions standing in respectful silence until the
man at the table looked up and spoke to them; then they crossed the
room, taking me with them, and halted before the table, upon the
opposite side of which the man sat facing us.

He spoke pleasantly to my companions, calling each by name, and
when they replied they addressed him as Jong. He was a fine-looking
man with a strong face and a commanding presence. His attire was
similar to that worn by all the other male Venusians I had seen,
differing only in that he wore about his head a fillet that
supported a circular metal disc in the center of his forehead. He
appeared much interested in me and watched me intently while
listening to Duran, who, I had no doubt, was narrating the story of
my strange and sudden appearance the night before.

When Duran had concluded, the man called Jong addressed me. His
manner was serious, his tones kindly. Out of courtesy, I replied,
though I knew that he could understand me no better than I had
understood him. He smiled and shook his head; then he fell into a
discussion with the others. Finally he struck a metal gong that
stood near him on the table; then he arose and came around the
table to where I stood. He examined my clothing carefully, feeling
its texture and apparently discussing the materials and the weave
with the others. Then he examined the skin of my hands and face,
felt of my hair, and made me open my mouth that he might examine my
teeth. I was reminded of the horse market and the slave block.
"Perhaps," I thought, "the latter is more apropos."

A man entered now whom I took to be a servant and, receiving
instructions from the man called Jong, departed again, while I
continued to be the object of minute investigation. My beard, which
was now some twenty-four hours old, elicited considerable comment.
It is not a beautiful beard at any age, being sparse and reddish,
for which reason I am careful to shave daily when I have the
necessary utensils.

I cannot say that I enjoyed this intimate appraisal, but the
manner in which it was conducted was so entirely free from any
suggestion of intentional rudeness or discourtesy, and my position
here was so delicate that my better judgment prevented me from
openly resenting the familiarities of the man called Jong. It is
well that I did not.

Presently a man entered through a doorway at my right. I assumed
that he had been summoned by the servant recently dispatched. As he
came forward, I saw that he was much like the others; a handsome
man of about thirty. There are those who declaim against monotony;
but for me there can never be any monotony of beauty, not even if
the beautiful things were all identical, which the Venusians I had
so far seen were not. All were beautiful, but each in his own
way.

The man called Jong spoke to the newcomer rapidly for about five
minutes, evidently narrating all that they knew about me and giving
instructions. When he had finished, the other motioned me to follow
him; and a few moments later I found myself in another room on the
same level. It had three large windows and was furnished with
several desks, tables, and chairs. Most of the available wall space
was taken up by shelves on which reposed what I could only assume
to be books—thousands of them.

The ensuing three weeks were as delightful and interesting as
any that I have ever experienced. During this time, Danus, in whose
charge I had been placed, taught me the Venusian language and told
me much concerning the planet, the people among whom I had fallen,
and their history. I found the language easy to master, but I shall
not at this time attempt to describe it fully. The alphabet
consists of twenty-four characters, five of which represent vowel
sounds, and these are the only vowel sounds that the Venusian vocal
chords seem able to articulate. The characters of the alphabet all
have the same value, there being no capital letters. Their system
of punctuation differs from ours and is more practical; for
example, before you start to read a sentence you know whether it is
exclamatory, interrogative, a reply to an interrogation, or a
simple statement. Characters having values similar to the comma and
semicolon are used much as we use these two; they have no colon;
their character that functions as does our period follows each
sentence, their question mark and exclamation point preceding the
sentences the nature of which they determine.

A peculiarity of their language that renders it easy to master
is the absence of irregular verbs; the verb root is never altered
for voice, mode, tense, number, or person, distinctions that are
achieved by the use of several simple, auxiliary words.

While I was learning to speak the language of my hosts, I also
learned to read and write it, and I spent many enjoyable hours
delving into the large library of which Danus is the curator while
my tutor was absent attending to his other duties, which are
numerous. He is chief physician and surgeon of his country,
physician and surgeon to the king, and head of a college of
medicine and surgery.

One of the first questions that Danus had asked me when I had
acquired a working knowledge of his language was where I came from,
but when I told him I had come from another world more than
twenty-six million miles from his familiar Amtor, which is the name
by which the Venusians know their world, he shook his head
skeptically.

"There is no life beyond Amtor," he said. "How can there be life
where all is fire?"

"What is your theory of the—" I started, but I had to
stop. There is no Amtorian word for universe, neither is there any
for sun, moon, star, or planet. The gorgeous heavens that we see
are never seen by the inhabitants of Venus, obscured as they
perpetually are by the two great cloud envelopes that surround the
planet. I started over again. "What do you believe surrounds
Amtor?" I asked.

He stepped to a shelf and returned with a large volume, which he
opened at a beautifully executed map of Amtor. It showed three
concentric circles. Between the two inner circles lay a circular
belt designated as Trabol, which means warm country. Here the
boundaries of seas, continents, and islands were traced to the
edges of the two circles that bounded it, in some places crossing
these boundaries as though marking the spots at which venturesome
explorers had dared the perils of an unknown and inhospitable
land.

"This is Trabol," explained Danus, placing a finger upon that
portion of the map I have briefly described. "It entirely surrounds
Strabol which lies in the center of Amtor. Strabol is extremely
hot, its land is covered with enormous forests and dense
undergrowth, and is peopled by huge land animals, reptiles, and
birds, its warm seas swarm with monsters of the deep. No man has
ventured far into Strabol and lived to return.

"Beyond Trabol," he continued, placing his finger on the outer
band designated as Karbol (Cold Country), "lies Karbol. Here it is
as cold as Strabol is hot. There are strange animals there too, and
adventurers have returned with tales of fierce human beings clothed
in fur. But it is an inhospitable land into which there is no
occasion to venture and which few dare penetrate far for fear of
being precipitated over the rim into the molten sea."

"Over what rim?" I asked.

He looked at me in astonishment. "I can well believe that you
come from another world when you ask me such questions as you do,"
he remarked. "Do you mean to tell me that you know nothing of the
physical structure of Amtor?"

"I know nothing of your theory concerning it," I replied.

"It is not a theory; it is a fact," he corrected me gently. "In
no other way may the various phenomena of nature be explained.
Amtor is a huge disc with an upturned rim, like a great saucer; it
floats upon a sea of molten metal and rock, a fact that is
incontrovertably proved by the gushing forth of this liquid mass
occasionally from the summits of mountains, when a hole has been
burned in the bottom of Amtor. Karbol, the cold country, is a wise
provision of nature that tempers the terrific heat that must
constantly surge about the outer rim of Amtor.

"Above Amtor, and entirely surrounding her above the molten sea,
is a chaos of fire and flame. From this our clouds protect us.
Occasionally there have occurred rifts in the clouds, and at such
times the heat from the fires above, when the rifts occurred in the
daytime, has been so intense as to wither vegetation and destroy
life, while the light that shone through was of blinding intensity.
When these rifts occurred at night there was no heat, but we saw
the sparks from the fire shining above us."

I tried to explain the spherical shape of the planets and that
Karbol was only the colder country surrounding one of Amtor's
poles, while Strabol, the hot country, lay in the equatorial
region; that Trabol was merely one of two temperate zones, the
other one being beyond the equatorial region, which was a band
around the middle of a globe and not, as he supposed, a circular
area in the center of a disc. He listened to me politely, but only
smiled and shook his head when I had finished.

At first I could not comprehend that a man of such evident
intelligence, education, and culture should cling to such a belief
as his, but when I stopped to consider the fact that neither he nor
any of his progenitors had ever seen the heavens, I began to
realize that there could not be much foundation for any other
theory, and even theories must have foundations. I also realized,
even more than I had before, something of what astronomy has meant
to the human race of earth in the advancement of science and
civilization. Could there have been such advancement had the
heavens been perpetually hidden from our view? I wonder.

But I did not give up. I drew his attention to the fact that if
his theory were correct, the boundary between Trabol and Strabol
(the temperate and the equatorial zones) should be much shorter
than that separating Trabol from Karbol, the polar region, as was
shown on the map, but could not have been proved by actual survey;
while my theory would require that the exact opposite be true,
which was easily demonstrable and must have been demonstrated if
surveys had ever been made, which I judged from the markings on the
map to be the case.

He admitted that surveys had been made and that they had shown
the apparent discrepancy that I had pointed out, but he explained
this ingeniously by a purely Amtorian theory of the relativity of
distance, which he proceeded to elucidate.

"A degree is one thousandth part of the circumference of a
circle," he commenced. (This is the Amtorian degree, her savants
not having had the advantage of a visible sun to suggest another
division of the circumference of a circle as did the Babylonians,
who hit upon three hundred sixty as being close enough.) "And no
matter what the length of the circumference, it measures just one
thousand degrees. The circle which separates Strabol from Trabol is
necessarily one thousand degrees in length. You will admit
that?"

"Certainly," I replied.

"Very good! Then, will you admit that the circle which separates
Trabol from Karbol measures exactly one thousand degrees?"

I nodded my assent.

"Things which equal the same thing equal each other, do they
not? Therefore, the inner and outer boundaries of Trabol are of
equal length, and this is true because of the truth of the theory
of relativity of distance. The degree is our unit of linear
measure. It would be ridiculous to say that the farther one was
removed from the center of Amtor the longer the unit of distance
became; it only appears to become longer; in relation to the
circumference of the circle and in relation to the distance from
the center of Amtor it is precisely the same.

"I know," he admitted, "that on the map it does not appear to be
the same, nor do actual surveys indicate that it is the same; but
it must be the same, for if it were not, it is obvious that Amtor
would be larger around the closer one approached the center and
smallest of all at the perimeter, which is so obviously ridiculous
as to require no refutation.

"This seeming discrepancy caused the ancients considerable
perturbation until about three thousand years ago, when Klufar, the
great scientist, expounded the theory of relativity of distance and
demonstrated that the real and apparent measurements of distance
could be reconciled by multiplying each by the square root of minus
one."

I saw that argument was useless and said no more; there is no
use arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root
of minus one.

For some time I had been aware that I was
in the house of Mintep, the king, and that the country was called
Vepaja. Jong, which I had originally thought to be his name, was
his title; it is Amtorian for king. I learned that Duran was of the
house of Zar and that Olthar and Kamlot were his sons; Zuro, one of
the women I had met there, was attached to Duran; the other, Alzo,
was attached to Olthar; Kamlot had no woman. I use the word
attached partially because it is a reasonably close translation of
the Amtorian word for the connection and partially because no other
word seems exactly to explain the relationship between these men
and women.

They were not married, because the institution of marriage is
unknown here. One could not say that they belonged to the men,
because they were in no sense slaves or servants, nor had they been
acquired by purchase or feat of arms. They had come willingly,
following a courtship, and they were free to depart whenever they
chose, just as the men were free to depart and seek other
connections; but, as I was to learn later, these connections are
seldom broken, while infidelity is as rare here as it is prevalent
on earth.

Each day I took exercise on the broad veranda that encircled the
tree at the level upon which my apartment was located; at least, I
assumed that it encircled the tree, but I did not know, as that
portion assigned to me was but a hundred feet long, a fifteenth
part of the circumference of the great tree. At each end of my
little segment was a fence. The section adjoining mine on the right
appeared to be a garden, as it was a mass of flowers and shrubbery
growing in soil that must have been brought up from that distant
surface of the planet that I had as yet neither set foot upon nor
seen. The section on my left extended in front of the quarters of
several young officers attached to the household of the king. I
call them young because Danus told me they were young, but they
appear to be about the same age as all the other Amtorians I have
seen. They were pleasant fellows, and after I learned to speak
their language we occasionally had friendly chats together.

But in the section at my right I had never seen a human being;
and then one day, when Danus was absent and I was walking alone, I
saw a girl among the flowers there. She did not see me; and I only
caught the briefest glimpse of her, but there was something about
her that made me want to see her again, and thereafter I rather
neglected the young officers on my left.

Though I haunted the end of my veranda next to the garden for
several days, I did not again see the girl during all that time.
The place seemed utterly deserted until one day I saw the figure of
a man among the shrubbery. He was moving with great caution,
creeping stealthily; and presently, behind him, I saw another and
another, until I had counted five of them all together.

They were similar to the Vepajans, yet there was a difference.
They appeared coarser, more brutal, than any of the men I had as
yet seen; and in other ways they were dissimilar to Danus, Duran,
Kamlot, and my other Venusian acquaintances. There was something
menacing and sinister, too, in their silent, stealthy
movements.

I wondered what they were doing there; and then I thought of the
girl, and for some reason the conclusion was forced upon me that
the presence of these men here had something to do with her, and
that it boded her harm. Just in what way I could not even surmise,
knowing so little of the people among whom fate had thrown me; but
the impression was quite definite, and it excited me. Perhaps it
rather overcame my better judgment, too, if my next act is any
index to the matter.

Without thought of the consequences and in total ignorance of
the identity of the men or the purpose for which they were in the
garden, I vaulted the low fence and followed them. I made no noise.
They had not seen me originally because I had been hidden from
their view by a larger shrub that grew close to the fence that
separated the garden from my veranda. It was through the foliage of
this shrub that I had observed them, myself unobserved.

Moving cautiously but swiftly, I soon overtook the hindmost man
and saw that the five were moving toward an open doorway beyond
which, in a richly furnished apartment, I saw the girl who had
aroused my curiosity and whose beautiful face had led me into this
mad adventure. Almost simultaneously, the girl glanced up and saw
the leading man at the doorway. She screamed, and then I knew that
I had not come in vain.

Instantly I leaped upon the man in front of me, and as I did so
I gave a great shout, hoping by that means to distract the
attention of the other four from the girl to me, and in that I was
wholly successful. The other four turned instantly. I had taken my
man so completely by surprise that I was able to snatch his sword
from its scabbard before he could recover his wits; and as he drew
his dagger and struck at me, I ran his own blade through his heart;
then the others were upon me.

Their faces were contorted by rage, and I could see that they
would give me no quarter.

The narrow spaces between the shrubbery reduced the advantage
which four men would ordinarily have had over a single antagonist,
for they could attack me only singly; but I knew what the outcome
must eventually be if help did not reach me, and as my only goal
was to keep the men from the girl, I backed slowly toward the fence
and my own veranda as I saw that all four of the men were following
me.

My shout and the girl's scream had attracted attention; and
presently I heard men running in the apartment in which I had seen
the girl, and her voice directing them toward the garden. I hoped
they would come before the fellows had backed me against the wall,
where I was confident that I must go down in defeat beneath four
swords wielded by men more accustomed to them than I. I thanked the
good fortune, however, that had led me to take up fencing seriously
in Germany, for it was helping me now, though I could not long hold
out against these men with the Venusian sword which was a new
weapon to me.

I had reached the fence at last and was fighting with my back
toward it. The fellow facing me was cutting viciously at me. I
could hear the men coming from the apartment. Could I hold out?
Then my opponent swung a terrific cut at my head, and, instead of
parrying it, I leaped to one side and simultaneously stepped in and
cut at him. His own swing had carried him off balance, and, of
course, his guard was down. My blade cut deep into his neck,
severing his jugular. From behind him another man was rushing upon
me.

Relief was coming. The girl was safe. I could accomplish no more
by remaining there and being cut to pieces, a fate I had only
narrowly averted in the past few seconds. I hurled my sword, point
first, at the oncoming Venusian; and as it tore into his breast I
turned and vaulted the fence into my own veranda.

Then, as I looked back, I saw a dozen Vepajan warriors overwhelm
the two remaining intruders, butchering them like cattle. There was
no shouting and no sound other than the brief clash of swords as
the two sought desperately but futilely to defend themselves. The
Vepajans spoke no word. They seemed shocked and terrified, though
their terror had most certainly not been the result of any fear of
their late antagonists. There was something else which I did not
understand, something mysterious in their manner, their silence,
and their actions immediately following the encounter.

Quickly they seized the bodies of the five strange warriors that
had been killed and, carrying them to the outer garden wall, hurled
them over into that bottomless abyss of the forest the terrific
depths of which my eyes had never been able to plumb. Then, in
equal silence, they departed from the garden by the same path by
which they had entered it.

I realized that they had not seen me, and I knew that the girl
had not. I wondered a little how they accounted for the deaths of
the three men I had disposed of, but I never learned. The whole
affair was a mystery to me and was only explained long after in the
light of ensuing events.

I thought that Danus might mention it and thus give me an
opportunity to question him; but he never did, and something kept
me from broaching the subject to him, modesty perhaps. In other
respects, however, my curiosity concerning these people was
insatiable; and I fear that I bored Danus to the verge of
distraction with my incessant questioning, but I excused myself on
the plea that I could only learn the language by speaking it and
hearing it spoken; and Danus, that most delightful of men, insisted
that it was not only a pleasure to inform me but his duty as well,
the jong having requested him to inform me fully concerning the
life, customs, and history of the Vepajans.

One of the many things that puzzled me was why such an
intelligent and cultured people should be living in trees,
apparently without servants or slaves and with no intercourse, as
far as I had been able to discover, with other peoples; so one
evening I asked him.

"It is a long story," replied Danus; "much of it you will find
in the histories here upon my shelves, but I can give you a brief
outline that will at least answer your question.

"Hundreds of years ago the kings of Vepaja ruled a great
country. It was not this forest island where you now find us, but a
broad empire that embraced a thousand islands and extended from
Strabol to Karbol; it included broad land masses and great oceans;
it was graced by mighty cities and boasted a wealth and commerce
unsurpassed through all the centuries before or since.

"The people of Vepaja in those days were numbered in the
millions; there were millions of merchants and millions of wage
earners and millions of slaves, and there was a smaller class of
brain workers. This class included the learned professions of
science, medicine, and law, of letters and the creative arts. The
military leaders were selected from all classes. Over all was the
hereditary jong.

"The lines between the classes were neither definitely nor
strictly drawn; a slave might become a free man, a free man might
become anything he chose within the limits of his ability, short of
jong. In social intercourse the four principal classes did not
intermingle with each other, due to the fact that members of one
class had little in common with members of the other classes and
not through any feeling of superiority or inferiority. When a
member of a lower class had won by virtue of culture, learning, or
genius to a position in a higher class, he was received upon an
equal footing, and no thought was given to his antecedents.

"Vepaja was prosperous and happy, yet there were malcontents.
These were the lazy and incompetent. Many of them were of the
criminal class. They were envious of those who had won to positions
which they were not mentally equipped to attain. Over a long period
of time they were responsible for minor discord and dissension, but
the people either paid no attention to them or laughed them down.
Then they found a leader. He was a laborer named Thor, a man with a
criminal record.

"This man founded a secret order known as Thorists and preached
a gospel of class hatred called Thorism. By means of lying
propaganda he gained a large following, and as all his energies
were directed against a single class, he had all the vast millions
of the other three classes to draw from, though naturally he found
few converts among the merchants and employers which also included
the agrarian class.

"The sole end of the Thorist leaders was personal power and
aggrandizement; their aims were wholly selfish, yet, because they
worked solely among the ignorant masses, they had little difficulty
in deceiving their dupes, who finally rose under their false
leaders in a bloody revolution that sounded the doom of the
civilization and advancement of a world.

"Their purpose was the absolute destruction of the cultured
class. Those of the other classes who opposed them were to be
subjugated or destroyed; the jong and his family were to be killed.
These things accomplished, the people would enjoy absolute freedom;
there would be no masters, no taxes, no laws.

"They succeeded in killing most of us and a large proportion of
the merchant class; then the people discovered what the agitators
already knew, that some one must rule, and the leaders of Thorism
were ready to take over the reins of government. The people had
exchanged the beneficent rule of an experienced and cultured class
for that of greedy incompetents and theorists.

"Now they are all reduced to virtual slavery. An army of spies
watches over them, and an army of warriors keeps them from turning
against their masters; they are miserable, helpless, and
hopeless.

"Those of us who escaped with our jong sought out this distant,
uninhabited island. Here we constructed tree cities, such as this,
far above the ground, from which they cannot be seen. We brought
our culture with us and little else; but our wants are few, and we
are happy. We would not return to the old system if we might. We
have learned our lesson, that a people divided amongst themselves
cannot be happy. Where there are even slight class distinctions
there are envy and jealousy. Here there are none; we are all of the
same class.

"We have no servants; whatever there is to do we do better than
servants ever did it. Even those who serve the jong are not
servants in the sense that they are menials, for their positions
are considered posts of honor, and the greatest among us take turns
in filling them."

"But I still do not understand why you choose to live in trees,
far above the ground," I said.

"For years the Thorists hunted us down to kill us," he
explained, "and we were forced to live in hidden, inaccessible
places; this type of city was the solution of our problem. The
Thorists still hunt us; and there are still occasional raids, but
now they are for a very different purpose. Instead of wishing to
kill us, they now wish to capture as many of us as they can.

"Having killed or driven away the brains of the nation, their
civilization has deteriorated, disease is making frightful inroads
upon them which they are unable to check, old age has reappeared
and is taking its toll; so they seek to capture the brains and the
skill and the knowledge which they have been unable to produce and
which we alone possess."

"Old age is reappearing? What do you mean?" I asked.

"Have you not noticed that there are no signs of old age among
us?" he inquired.

"Yes, of course," I replied, "nor any children. I have often
meant to ask you for an explanation."

"These are not natural phenomena," he assured me; "they are the
crowning achievements of medical science. A thousand years ago the
serum of longevity was perfected. It is injected every two years
and not only provides immunity from all diseases but insures the
complete restoration of all wasted tissue.

"But even in good there is evil. As none grew old and none died,
except those who met with violent deaths, we were faced with the
grave dangers of overpopulation. To combat this, birth control
became obligatory. Children are permitted now only in sufficient
numbers to replace actual losses in population. If a member of a
house is killed, a woman of that house is permitted to bear a
child, if she can; but after generations of childlessness there is
a constantly decreasing number of women who are capable of bearing
children. This situation we have met by anticipating it.

"Statistics compiled over a period of a thousand years indicate
the average death rate expectancy per thousand people; they have
also demonstrated that only fifty per cent of our women are capable
of bearing children; therefore, fifty per cent of the required
children are permitted yearly to those who wish them, in the order
in which their applications are filed."

"I have not seen a child since I arrived in Amtor," I told
him.

"There are children here," he replied, "but, of course, not
many."

"And no old people," I mused. "Could you administer that serum
to me, Danus?"

He smiled. "With Mintep's permission, which I imagine will not
be difficult to obtain. Come," he added, "I'll take some blood
tests now to determine the type and attenuation of serum best
adapted to your requirements." He motioned me into his
laboratory.

When he had completed the tests, which he accomplished with ease
and rapidity, he was shocked by the variety and nature of malignant
bacteria they revealed.

"You are a menace to the continued existence of human life on
Amtor," he exclaimed with a laugh.

"I am considered a very healthy man in my own world," I assured
him.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-seven."

"You would not be so healthy two hundred years from now if all
those bacteria were permitted to have their way with you."

"How old might I live to be if they were eradicated?" I
asked.

He shrugged. "We do not know. The serum was perfected a thousand
years ago. There are people among us today who were of the first to
receive injections. I am over five hundred years old; Mintep is
seven hundred. We believe that, barring accidents, we shall live
forever; but, of course, we do not know. Theoretically, we
should."

He was called away at this juncture; and I went out on the
veranda to take my exercise, of which I have found that I require a
great deal, having always been athletically inclined. Swimming,
boxing, and wrestling had strengthened and developed my muscles
since I had returned to America with my mother when I was eleven,
and I became interested in fencing while I was travelling in Europe
after she died. During my college days I was amateur middle-weight
boxer of California, and I captured several medals for distance
swimming; so the enforced inactivity of the past two months had
galled me considerably. Toward the end of my college days I had
grown into the heavy-weight class, but that had been due to an
increase of healthy bone and sinew; now I was at least twenty
pounds heavier and that twenty pounds was all fat.

On my one hundred feet of veranda I did the best I could to
reduce. I ran miles, I shadow boxed, I skipped rope, and I spent
hours with the old seventeen setting-up exercises of drill
regulations. Today I was shadow boxing near the right end of my
veranda when I suddenly discovered the girl in the garden observing
me. As our eyes met I halted in my tracks and smiled at her. A
frightened look came into her eyes, and she turned and fled. I
wondered why.

Puzzled, I walked slowly back toward my apartment, my exercises
forgotten. This time I had seen the girl's full face, looked her
squarely in the eyes, and I had been absolutely dumfounded by her
beauty. Every man and woman I had seen since I had come to Venus
had been beautiful; I had come to expect that. But I had not
expected to see in this or any other world such indescribable
perfection of coloring and features, combined with character and
intelligence, as that which I had just seen in the garden beyond my
little fence. But why had she run away when I smiled?

Possibly she had run away merely because she had been discovered
watching me for, after all, human nature is about the same
everywhere. Even twenty-six million miles from earth there are
human beings like ourselves and a girl, with quite human curiosity,
who runs away when she is discovered. I wondered if she resembled
earthly girls in other respects, but she seemed too beautiful to be
just like anything on earth or in heaven. Was she young or old?
Suppose she were seven hundred years old!

I went to my apartment and prepared to bathe and change my
loincloth; I had long since adopted the apparel of Amtor. As I
glanced in a mirror that hangs in my bathroom I suddenly understood
why the girl may have looked frightened and run away—my
beard! It was nearly a month old now and might easily have
frightened anyone who had never before seen a beard.

When Danus returned I asked him what I could do about it. He
stepped into another room and returned with a bottle of salve.

"Rub this into the roots of the hair on your face," he directed,
"but be careful not to get it on your eyebrows, lashes, or the hair
on your head. Leave it there a minute and then wash your face."

I stepped into my bathroom and opened the jar; its contents
looked like vaseline and smelled like the devil, but I rubbed it
into the roots of my beard as Danus had directed. When I washed my
face a moment later my beard came off, leaving my face smooth and
hairless. I hurried back to the room where I had left Danus.

"You are quite handsome after all," he remarked. "Do all the
people of this fabulous world of which you have told me have hair
growing on their faces?"

"Nearly all," I replied, "but in my country the majority of men
keep it shaved off."

"I should think the women would be the ones to shave," he
commented. "A woman with hair on her face would be quite repulsive
to an Amtorian."

"But our women do not have hair on their faces," I assured
him.

"And the men do! A fabulous world indeed."

"But if Amtorians do not grow beards, what was the need of this
salve that you gave me?" I asked.

"It was perfected as an aid to surgery," he explained. "In
treating scalp wounds and in craniectomies it is necessary to
remove the hair from about the wound. This unguent serves the
purpose better than shaving and also retards the growth of new hair
for a longer time."

"But the hair will grow out again?" I asked.

"Yes, if you do not apply the unguent too frequently," he
replied.

"How frequently?" I demanded.

"Use it every day for six days and the hair will never again
grow on your face. We used to use it on the heads of confirmed
criminals. Whenever one saw a bald-headed man or a man wearing a
wig he watched his valuables."

"In my country when one sees a bald-headed man," I said, "he
watches his girls. And that reminds me; I have seen a beautiful
girl in a garden just to the right of us here. Who is she?"

"She is one whom you are not supposed to see," he replied. "Were
I you, I should not again mention the fact that you have seen her.
Did she see you?"

"She saw me," I replied.

"What did she do?" His tone was serious.

"She appeared frightened and ran."

"Perhaps you had best keep away from that end of the veranda,"
he suggested.

There was that in his manner which precluded questions, and I
did not pursue the subject further. Here was a mystery, the first
suggestion of mystery that I had encountered in the life of Vepaja,
and naturally it piqued my curiosity. Why should I not look at the
girl? I had looked at other women without incurring displeasure.
Was it only this particular girl upon whom I must not look, or were
there other girls equally sacrosanct? It occurred to me that she
might be a priestess of some holy order, but I was forced to
discard that theory because of my belief that these people had no
religion, at least none that I could discover in my talks with
Danus. I had attempted to describe some of our earthly religious
beliefs to him, but he simply could not perceive either their
purpose or meaning any more than he could visualize the solar
system of the universe.

Having once seen the girl, I was anxious to see her again; and
now that the thing was proscribed, I was infinitely more desirous
than ever to look upon her divine loveliness and to speak with her.
I had not promised Danus that I would heed his suggestions, for I
was determined to ignore them should the opportunity arise.

I was commencing to tire of the virtual imprisonment that had
been my lot ever since my advent upon Amtor, for even a kindly
jailer and a benign prison regime are not satisfactory substitutes
for freedom. I had asked Danus what my status was and what they
planned for me in the future, but he had evaded a more direct
answer by saying that I was the guest of Mintep, the jong, and that
my future would be a matter of discussion when Mintep granted me an
audience.

Suddenly now I felt more than before the restrictions of my
situation, and they galled me. I had committed no crime. I was a
peaceful visitor to Vepaja. I had neither the desire nor the power
to harm anyone. These considerations decided me. I determined to
force the issue.

A few minutes ago I had been contented with my lot, willing to
wait the pleasure of my hosts; now I was discontented. What had
induced this sudden change? Could it be the mysterious alchemy of
personality that had transmuted the lead of lethargy to the gold of
ambitious desire? Had the aura of a vision of feminine loveliness
thus instantly reversed my outlook upon life?

I turned toward Danus. "You have been very kind to me," I said,
"and my days here have been happy, but I am of a race of people who
desire freedom above all things. As I have explained to you, I am
here through no intentional fault of my own; but I am here, and
being here I expect the same treatment that would be accorded you
were you to visit my country under similar circumstances."

"And what treatment would that be?" he asked.

"The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—
freedom," I explained. I did not think it necessary to mention
chambers of commerce dinners, Rotary and Kiwanis luncheons,
triumphal parades and ticker tape, keys to cities, press
representatives and photographers, nor news reel cameramen, the
price that he would undoubtedly have had to pay for life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

"But, my dear friend, one would think from your words that you
are a prisoner here!" he exclaimed.

"I am, Danus," I replied, "and none knows it better than
you."

He shrugged. "I am sorry that you feel that way about it,
Carson."

"How much longer is it going to last?" I demanded.

"The jong is the jong," he replied. "He will send for you in his
own time; until then, let us continue the friendly relations that
have marked our association up to now."

"I hope they will never be changed, Danus," I told him, "but you
may tell Mintep, if you will, that I cannot accept his hospitality
much longer; if he does not send for me soon, I shall leave on my
own accord."

"Do not attempt that, my friend," he warned me.

"And why not?"

"You would not live to take a dozen steps from the apartments
that have been assigned you," he assured me seriously.

"Who would stop me?"

"There are warriors posted in the corridors," he explained;
"they have their orders from the jong."

"And yet I am not a prisoner!" I exclaimed with a bitter
laugh.

"I am sorry that you raised the question," he said, "as
otherwise you might never have known."

Here indeed was the iron hand in the velvet glove I hoped it was
not wielded by a wolf in sheep's clothing. My position was not an
enviable one. Even had I the means to escape, there was no place
that I could go. But I did not want to leave Vepaja—I had
seen the girl in the garden.

A week passed, a week during which I
permanently discarded my reddish whiskers and received an injection
of the longevity serum. The latter event suggested that possibly
Mintep would eventually liberate me, for why bestow immortality
upon a potential enemy who is one's prisoner; but then I knew that
the serum did not confer absolute immortality—Mintep could
have me destroyed if he wished, by which thought was suggested the
possibility that the serum had been administered for the purpose of
lulling me into a sense of security which I did not, in reality,
enjoy. I was becoming suspicious.

While Danus was injecting the serum, I asked him if there were
many doctors in Vepaja.

"Not so many in proportion to the population as there were a
thousand years ago," he replied.

"All the people are now trained in the care of their bodies and
taught the essentials of health and longevity. Even without the
serums we use to maintain resistance to disease constantly in the
human body, our people would live to great ages. Sanitation, diet,
and exercise can accomplish wonders by themselves.

"But we must have some doctors. Their numbers are limited now to
about one to each five thousand citizens, and in addition to
administering the serum, the doctors attend those who are injured
by the accidents of daily life, in the hunt, and in duels and
war.

"Formerly there were many more doctors than could eke out an
honest living, but now there are various agencies that restrict
their numbers. Not only is there a law restricting these, but the
ten years of study required, the long apprenticeship thereafter,
and the difficult examinations that must be passed have all tended
to reduce the numbers who seek to follow this profession; but
another factor probably achieved more than all else to rapidly
reduce the great number of doctors that threatened the continuance
of human life on Amtor in the past.

"This was a regulation that compelled every physician and
surgeon to file a complete history of each of his cases with the
chief medical officer of his district. From diagnosis to complete
recovery or death, each detail of the handling of each case had to
be recorded and placed on record for the public to consult. When a
citizen requires the services of a physician or surgeon now, he may
easily determine those who have been successful and those who have
not. Fortunately, today there are few of the latter. The law has
proved a good one."

This was interesting, for I had had experience with physicians
and surgeons on earth. "How many doctors survived the operation of
this new law?" I asked.

"About two per cent," he replied.

"There must have been a larger proportion of good doctors on
Amtor than on earth," I commented.

Time hung heavily upon my hands. I read a great deal, but an
active young man cannot satisfy all his varied life interests with
books alone. And then there was the garden at my right. I had been
advised to avoid that end of my veranda, but I did not, at least
not when Danus was absent. When he was away I haunted that end of
the veranda, but it seemed deserted. And then one day I caught a
glimpse of her; she was watching me from behind a flowering
shrub.

I was close to the fence that separated my runway from her
garden; it was not a high fence, perhaps slightly under five feet.
She did not run this time, but stood looking straight at me,
possibly thinking that I could not see her because of the
intervening foliage. I could not see her plainly enough, that is
true; and, God, how I wanted to see her!

What is that inexplicable, subtle attraction that some woman
holds for every man? For some men there is only one woman in the
world who exercises this influence upon him, or perhaps if there
are more, the others do not cross his path; for other men there are
several; for some none. For me there was this girl of an alien
race, upon an alien planet. Perhaps there were others, but if there
were, I had never met them. In all my life before I had never been
moved by such an irresistible urge. What I did, I did upon the
strength of an impulse as uncontrollable as a law of nature;
perhaps it was a law of nature that motivated me. I vaulted the
fence.

Before the girl could escape me, I stood before her. There were
consternation and horror in her eyes. I thought that she was afraid
of me.

"Do not be afraid," I said; "I have not come to harm you, only
to speak to you."

She drew herself up proudly. "I am not afraid of you," she said;
"I—" she hesitated and then started over. "If you are seen
here you will be destroyed. Go back to your quarters at once and
never dare such a rash act again."

I thrilled to the thought that the fear that I had seen so
clearly reflected in her eyes was for my safety. "How may I see
you?" I asked.

"You may never see me," she replied.

"But I have seen you, and I intend seeing you again. I am going
to see a lot of you, or die in the attempt."

"Either you do not know what you are doing or you are mad," she
said and turned her back on me as she started to walk away.

I seized her arm. "Wait," I begged.

She wheeled on me like a tigress and slapped my face, and then
she whipped the dagger from the scabbard at her girdle. "How dare
you," she cried, "lay a hand upon me! I should kill you."

"Why don't you?" I asked.

"I loathe you," she said, and it sounded as though she meant
it.

"I love you," I replied, and I knew that I spoke the truth.

At that declaration her eyes did indeed reflect horror. She
wheeled then so quickly that I could not stop her and was gone. I
stood for a moment, debating whether I should follow her or not,
and then a modicum of reason intervened to save me from such an
assininity. An instant later I had vaulted the fence again. I did
not know whether anyone had seen me or not, and I did not care.

When Danus returned a short time later, he told me that Mintep
had sent him for me. I wondered if the summons was in any way
related to my adventure in the garden at the right, but I did not
inquire. If it were, I should know in due time. The attitude of
Danus was unchanged, but that no longer reassured me. I was
beginning to suspect that the Amtorians were masters of
dissimulation.

Two young officers from the quarters adjoining mine accompanied
us to the chamber where the jong was to question me. Whether or not
they were acting as an escort to prevent my escape I could not
tell. They chatted pleasantly with me during the short walk along
the corridor and up the staircase to the level above; but then the
guards usually chat pleasantly with the condemned man, if he feels
like chatting. They accompanied me into the room where the jong
sat. This time he was not alone; there were a number of men
gathered about him, and among these I recognized Duran, Olthar, and
Kamlot. For some reason the assemblage reminded me of a grand jury,
and I could not help but wonder if they were going to return a true
bill.

I bowed to the jong, who greeted me quite pleasantly enough, and
smiled and nodded to the three men in whose home I had spent my
first night on Venus. Mintep looked me over in silence for a moment
or two; when he had seen me before I had been dressed in my earthly
clothes, now I was garbed (or ungarbed) like a Vepajan.

"Your skin is not as light in color as I thought it," he
commented.

"Exposure to light on the veranda has darkened it," I replied. I
could not say sunlight, because they have no word for sun, of the
existence of which they do not dream. However, such was the case,
the ultra violet rays of sunlight having penetrated the cloud
envelopes surrounding the planet and tanned my body quite as
effectively as would exposure to the direct rays of the sun have
done.

"You have been quite happy here, I trust," he said.

"I have been treated with kindness and consideration," I
replied, "and have been quite as happy as any prisoner could
reasonably be expected to be."

The shadow of a smile touched his lips. "You are candid," he
commented.

"Candor is a characteristic of the country from which I come," I
replied.

"However, I do not like the word prisoner," he said.

"Neither do I, jong, but I like the truth. I have been a
prisoner, and I have been awaiting this opportunity to ask you why
I am a prisoner and to demand my freedom."

He raised his eyebrows; then he smiled quite openly. "I think
that I am going to like you," he said; "you are honest and you are
courageous, or I am no judge of men."

I inclined my head in acknowledgment of the compliment. I had
not expected that he would receive my blunt demand in a spirit of
such generous understanding; but I was not entirely relieved, for
experience had taught me that these people could be very suave
while being most uncompromising.

"There are some things that I wish to tell you and some
questions that I wish to ask you," he continued. "We are still
beset by our enemies, who yet send occasional raiding parties
against us, who upon numerous occasions have sought to introduce
their spies among us. We have three things that they require if
they are not to suffer extinction: scientific knowledge, and the
brains and experience to apply it Therefore they go to any lengths
to abduct our men, whom they purpose holding in slavery and forcing
to apply the knowledge that they themselves do not have. They also
abduct our women in the hope of breeding children of greater
mentality than those which are now born to them.

"The story that you told of crossing millions of miles of space
from another world is, of course, preposterous and naturally
aroused our suspicions. We saw in you another Thorist spy, cleverly
disguised. For this reason you have been under the careful and
intelligent observation of Danus for many days. He reports that
there is no doubt but that you were totally ignorant of the
Amtorian language when you came among us, and as this is the only
language spoken by any of the known races of the world, we have
come to the conclusion that your story may be, in part, true. The
fact that your skin, hair, and eyes differ in color from those of
any known race is further substantiation of this conclusion.
Therefore, we are willing to admit that you are not a Thorist, but
the questions remain: who are you, and from whence came you?"

"I have told only the truth," I replied; "I have nothing to add
other than to suggest that you carefully consider the fact that the
cloud masses surrounding Amtor completely obscure your view and
therefore your knowledge of what lies beyond."

He shook his head. "Let us not discuss it; it is useless to
attempt to overthrow the accumulated scientific research and
knowledge of thousands of years. We are willing to accept you as of
another race, perhaps, as was suggested by the clothing you wore
upon your arrival, from cold and dreary Karbol. You are free to
come and go as you please. If you remain, you must abide by the
laws and customs of Vepaja, and you must become self-supporting.
What can you do?"

"I doubt that I can compete with Vepajans at their own trades or
professions," I admitted, "but I can learn something if I am given
time."

"Perhaps we can find some one who will undertake your training,"
said the jong, "and in the meantime you may remain in my house,
assisting Danus."

"We will take him into our house and train him," spoke up Duran,
"if he cares to help us collect tarel and hunt."

Tarel is the strong, silky fiber from which their cloth and
cordage are made. I imagined that collecting it would be tame and
monotonous work, but the idea of hunting appealed to me. In no
event, however, could I ignore Duran's well-meant invitation, as I
did not wish to offend him, and, furthermore, anything would be
acceptable that would provide the means whereby I might become
self-supporting. I therefore accepted his offer, and, the audience
being concluded, I bid good-bye to Danus, who invited me to visit
him often, and withdrew with Duran, Olthar, and Kamlot.

As no mention had been made of the subject, I concluded that no
one had witnessed my encounter with the girl in the garden, who was
still uppermost in my thoughts and the principal cause of my regret
that I was to leave the house of the jong.

Once more I was established in the house of Duran, but this time
in a larger and more comfortable room. Kamlot took charge of me. He
was the younger of the brothers, a quiet, reserved man with the
muscular development of a trained athlete. After he had shown me my
room, he took me to another apartment, a miniature armory, in which
were many spears, swords, daggers, bows, shields, and almost
countless arrows. Before a window was a long bench with racks in
which were tools of various descriptions; above the bench were
shelves upon which were stacked the raw materials for the
manufacture of bows, arrows, and spear shafts. Near the bench were
a forge and anvil, and there were sheets and rods and ingots of
metal stored near by.

"Have you ever used a sword?" he asked as he selected one for
me.

"Yes, but for exercise only," I replied; "in my country we have
perfected weapons that render a sword useless in combat."

He asked me about these weapons and was much interested in my
description of earthly firearms. "We have a similar weapon on
Amtor," he said. "We of Vepaja do not possess them, because the
sole supply of the material with which they are charged lies in the
heart of the Thorist country. When the weapons are made they are
charged with an element that emits a ray of extremely short wave
length that is destructive of animal tissue, but the element only
emits these rays when exposed to the radiation of another rare
element. There are several metals that are impervious to these
rays. Those shields that you see hanging on the walls, the ones
that are metal covered, are ample protection from them. A small
shutter of similar metal is used in the weapon to separate the two
elements; when this shutter is raised and one element is exposed to
the emanations of the other, the destructive R-ray is released and
passes along the bore of the weapon toward the target at which the
latter has been aimed.

"My people invented and perfected this weapon," he added
ruefully, "and now it has been turned against us; but we get along
very well with what we have, as long as we remain in our trees.

"In addition to a sword and dagger, you will need a bow, arrows,
and a spear," and as he enumerated them he selected the various
articles for me, the last of which was really a short heavy
javelin. A swivelled ring was attached to the end of the shaft of
this weapon, and attached to the ring was a long, slender cord with
a hand loop at its extremity. This cord, which was no heavier than
ordinary wrapping twine, Kamlot coiled in a peculiar way and tucked
into a small opening in the side of the shaft.

"What is the purpose of that cord?" I asked, examining the
weapon.

"We hunt high in the trees," he replied, "and if it were not for
the cord we should lose many spears."

"But that cord is not heavy enough for that, is it?" I
asked.

"It is of tarel," he replied, "and could support the weight of
ten men. You will learn much of the properties and value of tarel
before you have been with us long. Tomorrow we shall go out
together and gather some. It has been rather scarce of late."

At the evening meal that day I met Zuro and Alzo again, and they
were most gracious to me. In the evening they all joined in
teaching me the favorite Vepajan game, tork, which is played with
pieces that are much like those used in mahjong and bears a
startling resemblance to poker.

I slept well that night in my new quarters and when daylight
broke I arose, for Kamlot had warned me that we should start early
upon our expedition. I cannot say that I looked forward with any
considerable degree of enthusiasm to spending the day gathering
tarel. The climate of Vepaja is warm and sultry, and I pictured the
adventure as being about as monotonous and disagreeable as picking
cotton in Imperial Valley.

After a light breakfast, which I helped Kamlot prepare, he told
me to get my weapons. "You should always wear your sword and
dagger," he added.

"Even in the house?" I asked.

"Always, wherever you are," he replied. "It is not only a
custom, but it is the law. We never know when we may be called upon
to defend ourselves, our houses, or our jong."

"Those are all that I need bring, I suppose," I remarked as I
was leaving the room.

"Bring your spear, of course; we are going to gather tarel," he
replied.

Why I should need a spear to gather tarel I could not imagine;
but I brought all the weapons that he had mentioned, and when I
returned he handed me a bag with a strap that went around my neck
to support it at my back.

"Is this for the tarel?" I asked.

He replied that it was.

"You do not expect to gather much," I rest marked.

"We may not get any," he replied. "If we get a bagful between us
we may do some tall boasting when we return."

I said no more, thinking it best to learn by experience rather
than to be continually revealing my lamentable ignorance. If tarel
were as scarce as his statement suggested, I should not have much
picking to do, and that suited me perfectly. I am not lazy, but I
like work that keeps my mind on the alert.

When we were both ready, Kamlot led the way upstairs, a
procedure which mystified me, it did not tempt me into asking any
more questions. We passed the two upper levels of the house and
entered a dark, spiral staircase that led still farther upward into
the tree. We ascended this for about fifteen feet, when Kamlot
halted and I heard him fumbling with something above me.

Presently the shaft was bathed with light, which I saw came
through a small circular opening that had been closed with a stout
door. Through this opening Kamlot crawled, and I followed him, to
find myself on a limb of the tree. My companion closed and locked
the door, using a small key. I now saw that the door was covered on
the outside with bark, so that when it was closed it would have
been difficult for anyone to have detected it.

With almost monkeylike agility, Kamlot ascended, while I,
resembling anything but a monkey in this respect, followed,
thankful for the lesser gravitational pull of Venus, however little
less than that of earth it might be, for I am not naturally
arboreal.

After ascending about a hundred feet, Kamlot crossed to an
adjacent tree, the branches of which interlocked with those of the
one we had been ascending, and again the upward climb commenced.
Occasionally the Vepajan stopped to listen as we passed from tree
to tree or clambered to higher levels. After we had travelled for
an hour or more, he stopped again and waited until I had overtaken
him. A finger on his lips enjoined me to silence.

"Tarel," he whispered, pointing through the foliage in the
direction of an adjacent tree.

I wondered why he had to whisper it, as my eyes followed the
direction of his index finger. Twenty feet away I saw what appeared
to be a huge spider web, partially concealed by the intervening
foliage.

"Be ready with your spear," whispered Kamlot. "Put your hand
through the loop. Follow me, but not too closely; you may need room
to cast your spear. Do you see him?"

"No," I admitted. I saw nothing but the suggestion of a spider
web; what else I was supposed to see I did not know.

"Neither do I, but he may be hiding. Look up occasionally so
that he can't take you by surprise from above."

This was more exciting than picking cotton in Imperial Valley,
though as yet I did not know just what there was to be excited
about. Kamlot did not appear excited; he was very cool, but he was
cautious. Slowly he crept toward the great web, his javelin ready
in his hand; and I followed. When we were in full sight of it we
saw that it was empty. Kamlot drew his dagger.

"Start cutting it away," he said. "Cut close to the branches and
follow the web around; I will cut in the other direction until we
meet. Be careful that you do not get enmeshed in it, especially if
he happens to return."

"Can't we go around it?" I asked.

Kamlot looked puzzled. "Why should we go around it?" he
demanded, a little shortly I thought.

"To get the tarel," I replied.

"What do you suppose this is?" he demanded.

"A spider's web."

"It is tarel."

I subsided. I had thought that the tarel he pointed at was
beyond the web, although I had seen nothing; but then of course I
had not known what tarel was or what it looked like. We had been
cutting away for a few minutes when I heard a noise in a tree near
us. Kamlot heard it at the same time.

"He is coming," he said. "Be ready!" He slipped his dagger into
its sheath and grasped his spear. I followed his example.

The sound stopped, but I could see nothing through the foliage.
Presently there was a rustling among the foliage, and a face
appeared some fifteen yards from us. It was a hideous
face—the face of a spider tremendously enlarged. When the
thing saw that we had discovered it, it emitted the most frightful
scream I had ever heard save once before. Then I recognized
them--the voice and the face. It had been a creature such as this
that had pursued my pursuer the night that I had dropped to the
causeway in front of the house of Duran.

"Be ready," cautioned Kamlot; "he will charge."

The words had scarcely crossed the lips of the Vepajan when the
hideous creature rushed toward us. Its body and legs were covered
with long, black hair, and there was a yellow spot the size of a
saucer above each eye. It screamed horribly as it came, as though
to paralyze us with terror.

Kamlot's spear hand flew back and forward, and the heavy
javelin, rushing to meet the maddened creature, buried itself
deeply in the repulsive carcass; but it did not stop the charge.
The creature was making straight for Kamlot as I hurled my javelin,
which struck it in the side; but even this did not stop it, and to
my horror I saw it seize my companion as he fell back upon the
great limb upon which he had stood, with the spider on top of
him.

The footing was secure enough for Kamlot and the spider, for
they were both accustomed to it, but to me it seemed very
precarious. Of course the tree limbs were enormous and often the
branches were laced together, yet I felt anything but secure.
However, I had no time to think of that now. If not already dead,
Kamlot was being killed. Drawing my sword, I leaped to the side of
the huge arachnid and struck viciously at its head, whereupon it
abandoned Kamlot and turned upon me; but it was badly wounded now
and moved with difficulty.

As I struck at that hideous face, I was horrified to see that
Kamlot lay as though dead. He did not move. But I had only time for
that single brief glance. If I were not careful I, too, should soon
be dead. The thing confronting me seemed endowed with unsappable
vitality. It was oozing sticky blood from several wounds, at least
two of which I thought should have been almost instantly lethal;
yet still it struggled to reach me with the powerful claws that
terminated its fore-legs, that it might draw me to those hideous
jaws.

The Vepajan blade is a keen, two-edged affair, a little wider
and thicker near the point than at the haft, and, while not well
balanced to my way of thinking, is a deadly cutting weapon. I found
it so in this my first experience with it, for as a great claw
reached out to seize me I severed it with a single blow. At this
the creature screamed more horribly than ever, and with its last
remaining vitality sprang upon me as you have seen spiders spring
upon their prey. I cut at it again as I stepped back; and then
thrust my point directly into that hideous visage, as the weight of
the creature overbore me and I went down beneath it.

As it crashed upon me, my body toppled from the great branch
upon which I had been standing, and I felt myself falling.
Fortunately, the interlacing, smaller branches gave me some
support; I caught at them and checked my fall, bringing up upon a
broad, flat limb ten or fifteen feet below. I had clung to my
sword, and being unhurt, clambered back as quickly as I could to
save Kamlot from further attack, but he needed no
protection—the great targo, as the creature is called, was
dead.

Dead also was Kamlot; I could find no pulse nor detect any
beating of the heart. My own sank within my breast. I had lost a
friend, I who had so few here, and I was as utterly lost as one may
be. I knew that I could not retrace our steps to the Vepajan city
even though my life depended upon my ability to do so, as it
doubtless did. I could descend, but whether I was still over the
city or not I did not know; I doubted it.

So this was gathering tarel; this was the occupation that I had
feared would bore me with its monotony!

Having set out to gather tarel I finished
the work that Kamlot and I had nearly completed when the targo
attacked us; if I succeeded in finding the city, I should at least
bring something to show for our efforts. But what about Kamlot? The
idea of leaving the body here was repugnant to me. Even in the
brief association I had had with the man I had come to like him and
to look upon him as my friend. His people had befriended me; the
least that I could do would be to take his body back to them. I
realized, of course, that that was going to be something of a job,
but it must be done. Fortunately, I am extraordinarily muscular,
and then, too, the gravitational pull of Venus favored me more than
would that of earth, giving me an advantage of over twenty pounds
in the dead weight I should have to carry and even a little better
than that in the amount of my own live weight, for I am heavier
than Kamlot.

With less difficulty than I had anticipated I succeeded in
getting Kamlot's body onto my back and trussed there with the cord
attached to his javelin. I had previously strapped his weapons to
him with strands of the tarel that half filled my bag, for, being
unfamiliar with all the customs of the country, I did not know
precisely what would be expected of me in an emergency of this
nature, and preferred to be on the safe side.

The experiences of the next ten or twelve hours are a nightmare
that I should like to forget. Contact with the dead and naked body
of my companion was sufficiently gruesome, but the sense of utter
bewilderment and futility in this strange world was even more
depressing. As the hours passed, during which I constantly
descended, except for brief rests, the weight of the corpse seemed
to increase. In life Kamlot would have weighed about one hundred
eighty pounds on earth, nearly one hundred sixty on Venus, but by
the time darkness enveloped the gloomy forest I could have sworn
that he weighed a ton.

So fatigued was I that I had to move very slowly, testing each
new hand- and foothold before trusting my tired muscles to support
the burden they were carrying, for a weak hold or a misstep would
have plunged me into eternity. Death was ever at my elbow.

It seemed to me that I descended thousands of feet and yet I had
seen no sign of the city. Several times I heard creatures moving
through the trees at a distance, and twice I heard the hideous
scream of a targo. Should one of these monstrous spiders attack
me—well, I tried not to think about that. Instead I tried to
occupy my mind with recollections of my earthly friends; I
visualized my childhood days in India as I studied under old Chand
Kabi, I thought of dear old Jimmy Welsh, and I recalled a bevy of
girls I had liked and with some of whom I had almost been serious.
These recalled the gorgeous girl in the garden of the jong, and the
visions of the others faded into oblivion. Who was she? What
strange interdiction had forbidden her to see or to speak with me?
She had said that she loathed me, but she had heard me tell her
that I loved her. That sounded rather silly now that I gave it
thought. How could I love a girl the first instant that I laid eyes
upon her, a girl concerning whom I knew absolutely nothing, neither
her age nor her name? It was preposterous, yet I knew that it was
true. I loved the nameless beauty of the little garden.

Perhaps my preoccupation with these thoughts made me careless; I
do not know, but my mind was filled with them when my foot slipped
a little after night had fallen. I grasped for support, but the
combined weights of myself and the corpse tore my hands loose, and
with my dead companion I plunged downward into the darkness. I felt
Death's cold breath upon my cheek.

We did not fall far, being brought up suddenly by something soft
that gave to our combined weights, then bounced up again, vibrating
like a safety net such as we have all seen used by aerial
performers. In the faint but all pervading light of the Amtorian
night I could see what I had already guessed—I had fallen
into the web of one of Amtor's ferocious spiders!

I tried to crawl to an edge where I might seize hold of a branch
and drag myself free, but each move but entangled me the more. The
situation was horrible enough, but a moment later it became
infinitely worse, as, glancing about me, I saw at the far edge of
the web the huge, repulsive body of a targo.

I drew my sword and hacked at the entangling meshes of the web
as the fierce arachnid crept slowly toward me. I recall wondering
if a fly entangled in a spider's web suffered the hopelessness and
the mental anguish that seized me as I realized the futility of my
puny efforts to escape this lethal trap and the ferocious monster
advancing to devour me. But at least I had some advantages that no
fly enjoys. I had my sword and a reasoning brain; I was not so
entirely helpless as the poor fly.

The targo crept closer and closer. It uttered no sound. I
presume that it was satisfied that I could not escape and saw no
reason why it should seek to paralyze me with fright. From a
distance of about ten feet it charged, moving with incredible
swiftness upon its eight hairy legs. I met it with the point of my
sword.

There was no skill in my thrust; it was just pure luck that my
point penetrated the creature's tiny brain. When it collapsed
lifeless beside me, I could scarcely believe the testimony of my
eyes. I was saved!

Instantly I fell to work severing the strands of tarel that
enmeshed me, and in four or five minutes I was free and had lowered
myself to a branch below. My heart was still pounding rapidly and I
was weak from exhaustion. For a quarter of an hour I remained
resting; then I continued the seemingly endless descent out of this
hideous forest.

What other dangers confronted me I could not guess. I knew that
there were other creatures in this gigantic wood; those powerful
webs, capable of sustaining the weight of an ox, had not been built
for man alone. During the preceding day I had caught occasional
glimpses of huge birds, which might themselves, if carnivorous,
prove as deadly menaces as the targo; but it was not them that I
feared now, but the nocturnal prowlers that haunt every forest by
night.

Down and down I descended, feeling that each next moment must
witness the final collapse of my endurance. The encounter with the
targo had taken terrific toll of my great strength, already sapped
by the arduous experiences of the day, yet I could not stop, I
dared not. Yet how much longer could I drive exhausted nature on
toward the brink of utter collapse?

I had about reached the end of my endurance when my feet struck
solid ground. At first I could not believe the truth, but glancing
down and about me I saw that I had indeed reached the floor of the
forest; after a month on Venus I had at last placed foot upon her
surface. I could see little or nothing—just the enormous
boles of great trees in whatever direction I looked. Beneath my
feet lay a thick matting of fallen leaves, turned white in
death.

I cut the cords that bound the corpse of Kamlot to my back and
lowered my poor comrade to the ground; then I threw myself down
beside him and was asleep almost immediately.

When I awoke, it was daylight again. I looked about me, but
could see nothing but the counterpane of whitened leaves spread
between the boles of trees of such gargantuan girth that I almost
hesitate to suggest the size of some of them, lest I discredit the
veracity of this entire story of my experiences on Venus. But
indeed they must need to be huge to support their extraordinary
height, for many of them towered over six thousand feet above the
surface of the ground, their lofty pinnacles enshrouded forever in
the eternal fog of the inner cloud envelope.

To suggest an idea of the size of some of these monsters of the
forest, I may say that I walked around the bole of one, counting
over a thousand paces in the circuit, which gives, roughly, a
diameter of a thousand feet, and there were many such. A tree ten
feet in diameter appeared a frail and slender sapling—and
there can be no vegetation upon Venus!

What little knowledge of physics I had and a very slight
acquaintance with botany argued that trees of such height could not
exist, but there must be some special, adaptive forces operating on
Venus that permit the seemingly impossible. I have attempted to
figure it out in terms of earthly conditions, and I have arrived at
some conclusions that suggest possible explanations for the
phenomenon. If vertical osmosis is affected by gravity, then the
lesser gravity of Venus would favor the growth of taller trees, and
the fact that their tops are forever in the clouds would permit
them to build up an ample supply of carbohydrates from the abundant
water vapor, provided there was the requisite amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus to promote this photosynthetic
process.

I must admit, however, that at the time I was not greatly
interested in these intriguing speculations; I had to think about
myself and poor Kamlot. What was I to do with the corpse of my
friend? I had done my best to return him to his people, and failed.
I doubted now that I could ever find his people. There remained but
a single alternative; I must bury him.

This decided, I started to scrape away the leaves beside him,
that I might reach the ground beneath and dig a grave. There were
about a foot of leaves and leaf mold and below that a soft, rich
soil which I loosened easily with the point of my spear and scooped
out with my hands. It did not take me long to excavate a nice
grave; it was six feet long, two feet wide, and three feet deep. I
gathered some freshly fallen leaves and carpeted its bottom with
them, and then I gathered some more to place around and over Kamlot
after I had lowered him to his final resting place.

While I worked I tried to recall the service for the dead; I
wanted Kamlot to have as decent and orderly a burial as I could
contrive. I wondered what God would think about it, but I had no
doubt but that he would receive this first Amtorian soul to be
launched into the unknown with a Christian burial and welcome him
with open arms.

As I stooped and put my arms about the corpse to lower it into
the grave, I was astounded to discover that it was quite warm. This
put an entirely new aspect on the matter. A man dead for eighteen
hours should be cold. Could it be that Kamlot was not dead? I
pressed an ear to his chest; faintly I heard the beating of his
heart. Never before had I experienced such an access of relief and
joy. I felt as one reborn to new youth, to new hopes, to new
aspirations. I had not realized until that instant the depth of my
loneliness.

But why was Kamlot not dead? and how was I to resuscitate him? I
felt that I should understand the former before I attempted the
latter. I examined the wound again. There were two deep gashes on
his chest just below the presternum. They had bled but little, and
they were discolored, as I now noticed, by a greenish tint. It was
this, meaningless though it may be, that suggested an explanation
of Kamlot's condition. Something about that greenish tint suggested
poison to my mind, and at once I recalled that there were varieties
of spiders that paralyzed their victims by injecting a poison into
them that preserved them in a state of suspended animation until
they were ready to devour them. The targo had paralyzed Kamlot!

My first thought was to stimulate circulation and respiration,
and to this end I alternately massaged his body and applied the
first aid measures adapted to the resuscitation of the drowned.
Which of these accomplished the result I do not know (perhaps each
helped a little), but at any rate I was rewarded after a long
period of effort with evidences of returning animation. Kamlot
sighed and his eyelids fluttered. After another considerable
period, during which I nearly exhausted myself, he opened his eyes
and looked at me.

At first his gaze was expressionless and I thought that perhaps
his mind had been affected by the poison; then a puzzled,
questioning look entered his eyes and eventually recognition. I was
witnessing a resurrection.

"What happened?" he asked in a whisper, and then, "Oh, yes, I
recall; the targo got me." He sat up, with my assistance, and
looked around. "Where are we?" he demanded.

"On the ground," I replied, "but where on the ground I do not
know."

"You saved me from the targo," he said. "Did you kill it? But
you must have, or you never could have gotten me away from it. Tell
me about it."

Briefly, I told him. "I tried to get you back to the city, but I
became lost and missed it. I have no idea where it lies."

"What is this?" he asked, glancing at the excavation beside
him.

"Your grave," I replied. "I thought that you were dead."

"And you carried a corpse half a day and half a night! But
why?"

"I do not know all the customs of your people," I replied; "but
your family has been kind to me, and the least that I could do was
to bring your body back to them, nor could I leave a friend up
there to be devoured by birds and beasts."

"I shall not forget," he said quietly. He tried to rise then,
but I had to assist him. "I shall be all right presently," he
assured me, "after I have exercised a little. The effects of the
targo's poison wear off in about twenty-four hours even without
treatment. What you have done for me has helped to dissipate them
sooner, and a little exercise will quickly eradicate the tart
vestiges of them." He stood looking about as though in an effort to
orient himself, and as he did so his eyes fell upon his weapons,
which I had intended burying with him and which lay on the ground
beside the grave. "You even brought these!" he exclaimed. "You are
a jong among friends!"

After he had buckled his sword belt about his hips, he picked up
his spear, and together we walked through the forest, searching for
some sign that would indicate that we had reached a point beneath
the city, Kamlot having explained that trees along the important
trails leading to the location of the city were marked in an
inconspicuous and secret manner, as were certain trees leading
upward to the hanging city.

"We come to the surface of Amtor but seldom," he said, "though
occasionally trading parties descend and go to the coast to meet
vessels from the few nations with which we carry on a surreptitious
commerce. The curse of Thorism has spread far, however, and there
are few nations of which we have knowledge that are not subject to
its cruel and selfish domination. Once in a while we descend to
hunt the basto for its hide and flesh."

"What is a basto?" I inquired.

"It is a large, omnivorous animal with powerful jaws armed with
four great fangs in addition to its other teeth. On its head grow
two heavy horns. At the shoulder it is as tall as a tall man. I
have killed them that weighed thirty-six hundred tob."

A tob is the Amtorian unit of weight, and is the equivalent of
one third of an English pound; all weights are computed in tobs or
decimals thereof, as they use the decimal system exclusively in
their tables of weights and measures. It seems to me much more
practical than the confusing earthly collection of grains, grams,
ounces, pounds, tons, and the other designations in common use
among the various nations of our planet.

From Kamlot's description I visualized the basto as an enormous
boar with horns, or a buffalo with the jaws and teeth of a
carnivore, and judged that its twelve hundred pounds of weight
would render it a most formidable beast. I asked him with what
weapons they hunted the animal.

"Some prefer arrows, others spears," he explained, "and it is
always handy to have a low branched tree near by," he added with a
grin.

"They are bellicose?" I asked.

"Very. When a basto appears upon the scene, man is as often the
hunted as the hunter, but we are not hunting bastos now. What I
should most like to find is a sign that would tell me where we
are."

We moved on through the forest, searching for the tiny road
signs of the Vepajans, which Kamlot had described to me as well as
explaining the location in which they are always placed. The sign
consists of a long, sharp nail with a flat head bearing a number in
relief. These nails are driven into trees at a uniform height from
the ground. They are difficult to find, but it is necessary to have
them so, lest the enemies of the Vepajans find and remove them, or
utilize them in their search for the cities of the latter.

The method of the application of these signs to the requirements
of the Vepajans is clever. They would really be of little value to
any but a Vepajan as guide posts, yet each nail tells a remarkable
story to the initiated; briefly it tells him precisely where he is
on the island that comprises the kingdom of Mintep, the jong. Each
nail is placed in position by a surveying party and its exact
location is indicated on a map of the island, together with the
number on the head of the nail. Before a Vepajan is permitted to
descend to the ground alone, or to lead others there, he must
memorize the location of every sign nail in Vepaja. Kamlot had done
so. He told me that if we could find but a single nail he would
immediately know the direction of and distance to those on either
side of it, our exact position upon the island, and the location of
the city; but he admitted that we might wander a long time before
we discovered a single nail.

The forest was monotonously changeless. There were trees of
several species, some with branches that trailed the ground, others
bare of branches for hundreds of feet from their bases. There were
boles as smooth as glass and as straight as a ship's mast, without
a single branch as far up as the eye could see. Kamlot told me that
the foliage of these grew in a single enormous tuft far up among
the clouds.

I asked him if he had ever been up there, and he said he had
climbed, he believed, to the top of the tallest tree, but that he
had nearly frozen to death in the attempt. "We get our water supply
from these trees," he remarked. "They drink in the water vapor
among the clouds and carry it down to their roots. They are unlike
any other tree. A central, porous core carries the water from the
clouds to the roots, from whence it rises again in the form of sap
that carries the tree's food upward from the ground. By tapping one
of these trees anywhere you may obtain a copious supply of clear,
cool water—a fortunate provision of nature."

"Something is coming, Kamlot," I interrupted. "Do you hear
it?"

He listened intently for a moment. "Yes," he replied. "We had
better take to a tree, at least until we see what it is."

As he climbed into the branches of a near-by tree, I followed
him, and there we waited. Distinctly I could hear something moving
through the forest as it approached us. The soft carpet of leaves
beneath its feet gave forth but little sound—just a rustling
of the dry leaves. Nearer and nearer it came, apparently moving
leisurely; then, suddenly, its great head came into view from
behind the bole of a tree a short distance from us.

"A basto," whispered Kamlot, but from his previous description
of the beast I had already guessed its identity.

It looked like a basto, only more so. From the eyes up its head
resembled that of an American bison, with the same short, powerful
horns. Its poll and forehead were covered with thick, curly hair,
its eyes were small and red-rimmed. Its hide was blue and of about
the same texture as that of an elephant, with sparsely growing
hairs except upon the head and at the tip of the tail. It stood
highest at the shoulders and sloped rapidly to its rump. Its front
legs were short and stocky and ended in broad, three-toed feet; its
hind legs were longer and the hind feet smaller, a difference
necessitated by the fact that the fore-legs and feet carried fully
three quarters of the beast's weight. Its muzzle was similar to
that of a boar, except that it was broader, and carried heavy,
curved tusks.

"Here comes our next meal," remarked Kamlot in an ordinary tone
of voice. The basto stopped and looked about as he heard my
companion's voice. "They are mighty good eating," added Kamlot,
"and we have not eaten for a long while. There is nothing like a
basto steak grilled over a wood fire."

My mouth commenced to water. "Come on," I said, and started to
climb down from the tree, my spear ready in my hand.

"Come back!" called Kamlot. "You don't know what you are
doing."

The basto had located us and was advancing, uttering a sound
that would have put to shame the best efforts of a full-grown lion.
I do not know whether to describe it as a bellow or a roar. It
started with a series of grunts and then rose in volume until it
shook the ground.

"He seems to be angry," I remarked; "but if we are going to eat
him we must kill him first, and how are we to kill him if we remain
in the tree?"

"I am not going to remain in the tree," replied Kamlot, "but you
are. You know nothing about hunting these beasts, and you would
probably not only get yourself killed but me into the bargain. You
stay where you are. I will attend to the basto."

This plan did not suit me at all, but I was forced to admit
Kamlot's superior knowledge of things Amtorian and his greater
experience and defer to his wishes, but nevertheless I held myself
ready to go to his assistance should occasion require.

To my surprise, he dropped his spear to the ground and carried
in its stead a slender leafy branch which he cut from the tree
before descending to engage the bellowing basto. He did not come
down to the floor of the forest directly in front of the beast, but
made his way part way around the tree before descending, after
asking me to keep the basto's attention diverted, which I did by
shouting and shaking a branch of the tree.

Presently, to my horror, I saw Kamlot out in the open a dozen
paces in rear of the animal, armed only with his sword and the
leafy branch which he carried in his left hand. His spear lay on
the ground not far from the enraged beast and his position appeared
utterly hopeless should the basto discover him before he could
reach the safety of another tree. Realizing this, I redoubled my
efforts to engage the creature's attention until Kamlot shouted to
me to desist.

I thought that he must have gone crazy and should not have
heeded him had not his voice attracted the attention of the basto
and frustrated any attempt that I might have made to keep the
beast's eyes upon me. The instant that Kamlot called to me the
great head turned ponderously in his direction and the savage eyes
discovered him. The creature wheeled and stood for a moment eyeing
the rash but puny man-thing; then it trotted toward him.

I waited no longer but dropped to the ground with the intention
of attacking the thing from the rear. What happened thereafter
happened so quickly that it was over almost in the time it takes to
tell it. As I started in pursuit, I saw the mighty basto lower its
head and charge straight for my companion, who stood there
motionless with his puny sword and the leafy branch grasped one in
either hand. Suddenly, at the very instant that I thought the
creature was about to impale him on those mighty horns, he waved
the leaf covered branch in its face and leaped lightly to one side,
simultaneously driving the keen point of his blade downward from a
point in front of the left shoulder until the steel was buried to
the hilt in the great carcass.

The basto stopped, its four legs spread wide for an instant it
swayed, and then it crashed to the ground at the feet of Kamlot. A
shout of admiration was on my lips when I chanced to glance upward.
What attracted my attention I do not know, perhaps the warning of
that inaudible voice which we sometimes call a sixth sense. What I
saw drove the basto and the feat of Kamlot from my thoughts.

"My God!" I cried in English, and then in Amtorian, "Look,
Kamlot! What are those?"

Hovering just above us, I saw what at
first appeared to be five enormous birds; but which I soon
recognized, despite my incredulity, as winged men. They were armed
with swords and daggers, and each carried a long rope at the end of
which dangled a wire noose.

"Voo klangan!" shouted Kamlot. (The birdmen!)

Even as he spoke a couple of wire nooses settled around each of
us. We struggled to free ourselves, striking at the snares with our
swords, but our blades made no impression upon the wires, and the
ropes to which they were attached were beyond our reach. As we
battled futilely to disengage ourselves, the klangan settled to the
ground, each pair upon opposite sides of the victim they had
snared. Thus they held us so, that we were helpless, as two cowboys
hold a roped steer, while the fifth angan approached us with drawn
sword and disarmed us. (Perhaps I should explain that angan is
singular, klangan plural, plurals of Amtorian words being formed by
prefixing kloo to words commencing with a consonant and kl to those
commencing with a vowel.)

Our capture had been accomplished so quickly and so deftly that
it was over, with little or no effort on the part of the birdmen,
before I had had time to recover from the astonishment that their
weird appearance induced. I now recalled having heard Danus speak
of voo klangan upon one or two occasions, but I had thought
that he referred to poultry breeders or something of that sort. How
little could I have dreamed of the reality!

"I guess we are in for it," remarked Kamlot gloomily.

"What will they do with us?" I inquired. "Ask them," he
replied.

"Who are you?" demanded one of our captors.

For some reason I was astonished to hear him speak, although I
do not know why anything should have astonished me now. "I am a
stranger from another world," I told him. "My friend and I have no
quarrel with you. Let us go."

"You are wasting your breath," Kamlot advised me.

"Yes, he is wasting his breath," agreed the angan. "You are
Vepajans, and we have orders to bring Vepajans to the ship. You do
not look like a Vepajan," he added, surveying me from head to feet,
"but the other does."

"Anyway, you are not a Thorist, and therefore you must be an
enemy," interjected another.

They removed the nooses from about us and tied ropes around our
necks and other ropes about our bodies beneath our arms; then two
klangan seized the ropes attached to Kamlot and two more those
attached to me, and, spreading their wings, rose into the air,
carrying us with them. Our weight was supported by the ropes
beneath our arms, but the other ropes were a constant suggestion to
us of what might happen if we did not behave ourselves.

As they flew, winding their way among the trees, our bodies were
suspended but a few feet above the ground, for the forest lanes
were often low ceiled by overhanging branches. The klangan talked a
great deal among themselves, shouting to one another and laughing
and singing, seemingly well satisfied with themselves and their
exploit. Their voices were soft and mellow, and their songs were
vaguely reminiscent of Negro spirituals, a similarity which may
have been enhanced by the color of their skins, which were very
dark.

As Kamlot was carried in front of me, I had an opportunity to
observe the physical characteristics of these strange creatures
into whose hands we had fallen. They had low, receding foreheads,
huge, beaklike noses, and undershot jaws; their eyes were small and
close set, their ears flat and slightly pointed. Their chests were
large and shaped like those of birds, and their arms were very
long, ending in long-fingered, heavy-nailed hands. The lower part
of the torso was small, the hips narrow, the legs very short and
stocky, ending in three-toed feet equipped with long, curved
talons. Feathers grew upon their heads instead of hair. When they
were excited, as when they attacked us, these feathers stand erect,
but ordinarily they lie flat. They are all alike; commencing near
the root they are marked with a band of white, next comes a band of
black, then another of white, and the tip is red. Similar feathers
also grow at the lower extremity of the torso in front, and there
is another, quite large bunch just above the buttocks—a
gorgeous tail which they open into a huge pompon when they wish to
show off.

Their wings, which consist of a very thin membrane supported on
a light framework, are similar in shape to those of a bat and do
not appear adequate to the support of the apparent weight of the
creatures' bodies, but I was to learn later that this apparent
weight is deceptive, since their bones, like the bones of true
birds, are hollow.

The creatures carried us a considerable distance, though how far
I do not know. We were in the air fully eight hours; and, where the
forest permitted, they flew quite rapidly. They seemed utterly
tireless, though Kamlot and I were all but exhausted long before
they reached their destination. The ropes beneath our arms cut into
our flesh, and this contributed to our exhaustion as did our
efforts to relieve the agony by seizing the ropes above us and
supporting the weight of our bodies with our hands.

But, as all things must, this hideous journey ended at last.
Suddenly we broke from the forest and winged out across a
magnificent land-locked harbor, and for the first time I looked
upon the waters of a Venusian sea. Between two points that formed
the harbor's entrance I could see it stretching away as far as the
eye could reach—mysterious, intriguing, provocative. What
strange lands and stranger people lay off there beyond the beyond?
Would I ever know?

Suddenly now my attention and my thoughts were attracted to
something in the left foreground that I had not before noticed; a
ship lay at anchor on the quiet waters of the harbor and just
beyond it a second ship. Toward one of them our captors were
winging. As we approached the nearer and smaller, I saw a craft
that differed but little in the lines of its hull from earthly
ships. It had a very high bow, its prow was sharp and sloped
forward in a scimitarlike curve; the ship was long and narrow of
beam. It looked as though it might have been built for speed. But
what was its motive power? It had no masts, sails, stacks, nor
funnels. Aft were two oval houses—a smaller one resting upon
the top of a larger; on top of the upper house was an oval tower
surmounted by a small crow's nest. There were doors and windows in
the two houses and the tower. As we came closer, I could see a
number of open hatches in the deck and people standing on the
walkways that surrounded the tower and the upper house and also
upon the main deck. They were watching our approach.

As our captors deposited us upon the deck, we were immediately
surrounded by a horde of jabbering men. A man whom I took to be an
officer ordered the ropes removed from us, and while this was being
done he questioned the klangan who had brought us.

All the men that I saw were similar in color and physique to the
Vepajans, but their countenances were heavy and unintelligent; very
few of them were good-looking, and only one or two might have been
called handsome. I saw evidences of age among them and of
disease—the first I had seen on Amtor.

After the ropes had been removed, the officer ordered us to
follow him, after detailing four villainous-looking fellows to
guard us, and conducted us aft and up to the tower that surmounted
the smaller house. Here he left us outside the tower, which he
entered.

The four men guarding us eyed us with surly disfavor. "Vepajans,
eh!" sneered one. "Think you're better than ordinary men, don't
you? But you'll find out you ain't, not in The Free Land of Thora;
there everybody's equal. I don't see no good in bringing your kind
into the country anyway. If I had my way you'd get a dose of this,"
and he tapped a weapon that hung in a holster at his belt.

The weapon, or the grip of it, suggested a pistol of some kind,
and I supposed that it was one of those curious firearms
discharging deadly rays, that Kamlot had described to me. I was
about to ask the fellow to let me see it when the officer emerged
from the tower and ordered the guard to bring us in.

We were escorted into a room in which sat a scowling man with a
most unprepossessing countenance. There was a sneer on his face as
he appraised us, the sneer of the inferior man for his superior,
that tries to hide but only reveals the inferiority complex that
prompts it. I knew that I was not going to like him.

"Two more klooganfal!" he exclaimed. (A ganfal is a criminal.)
"Two more of the beasts that tried to grind down the workers; but
you didn't succeed, did you? Now we are the masters. You'll find
that out even before we reach Thora. Is either of you a
doctor?"

Kamlot shook his head. "Not I," he said.

The fellow, whom I took to be the captain of the ship, eyed me
closely. "You are no Vepajan," he said. "What are you, anyway? No
one ever saw a man with yellow hair and blue eyes before."

"As far as you are concerned," I replied, "I am a Vepajan. I
have never been in any other country in Amtor."

"What do you mean by saying as far as I am concerned?" he
demanded.

"Because it doesn't make any difference what you think about
it," I snapped. I did not like the fellow, and when I do not like
people I have difficulty in hiding the fact. In this case I did not
try to hide it.

He flushed and half rose from his chair. "It doesn't, eh?" he
cried.

"Sit down," I advised him. "You're here under orders to bring
back Vepajans Nobody cares what you think about them, but you'll
get into trouble if you don't bring them back."

Diplomacy would have curbed my tongue, but I am not particularly
diplomatic, especially when I am angry, and now I was both angry
and disgusted, for there had been something in the attitude of all
these people toward us that bespoke ignorant prejudice and
bitterness. Furthermore, I surmised from scraps of information I
had picked up from Danus, as well as from the remarks of the sailor
who had announced that he would like to kill us, that I was not far
wrong in my assumption that the officer I had thus addressed would
be exceeding his authority if he harmed us. However, I realized
that I was taking chances, and awaited with interest the effect of
my words.

The fellow took them like a whipped cur and subsided after a
single weakly blustering, "We'll see about that." He turned to a
book that lay open before him. "What is your name?" he asked,
nodding in Kamlot's direction. Even his nod was obnoxious.

"I am Carson of Napier," I replied, using the Amtorian form; "I
am a Vepajan from Kooaad."

"What is your profession?"

"I am an aviator," I replied, using the English word and
English pronunciation.

"A what?" he demanded. "I never heard of such a thing." He tried
to write the word in his book and then he tried to pronounce it,
but he could do neither, as the Amtorians have no equivalents for
many of our vowel sounds and seem unable even to pronounce them.
Had I written the word for him in Amtorian he would have pronounced
it ah-vy-ah-tore, as they cannot form the long a and short
o sounds, and their i is always long.

Finally, to cover his ignorance, he wrote some thing in his
book, but what it was I did not know; then he looked up at me
again. "Are you a doctor?"

"Yes," I replied, and as the officer made the notation in his
book, I glanced at Kamlot out of the corner of an eye and
winked.

"Take them away," the man now directed, "and be careful of this
one," he added, indicating me; "he is a doctor."

We were taken to the main deck and led forward to the
accompaniment of jeers and jibes from the sailors congregated on
the deck. I saw the klangan strutting around, their tail feathers
erect. When they saw us, they pointed at Kamlot, and I heard them
telling some of the sailors that he was the one who had slain the
basto with a single sword thrust, a feat which appeared to force
their admiration, as well it might have.

We were escorted to an open hatch and ordered below into a dark,
poorly ventilated hole, where we found several other prisoners.
Some of them were Thorans undergoing punishment for infractions of
discipline; others were Vepajan captives like ourselves, and among
the latter was one who recognized Kamlot and hailed him as we
descended into their midst.

"'Ill fortune' does not describe it," replied Honan;
"catastrophe would be a better word. The klangan were seeking women
as well as men; they saw Duare" (pronounced Doo-ah'-ree) "and
pursued her; as I sought to protect her they captured me."

"Your sacrifice was not in vain," said Kamlot; "had you died in
the performance of such a duty it would not have been in vain."

"But it was in vain; that is the catastrophe."

"What do you mean?" demanded Kamlot.

"I mean that they got her," replied Honan dejectedly.

"They captured Duare!" exclaimed Kamlot in tones of horror. "By
the life of the jong, it cannot be."

"I wish it were not," said Honan.

"Where is she? on this ship?" demanded Kamlot.

"No; they took her to the other, the larger one."

Kamlot appeared crushed, and I could only attribute his
dejection to the hopelessness of a lover who has irretrievably lost
his beloved. Our association had not been either sufficiently close
nor long to promote confidences, and so I was not surprised that I
had never heard him mention the girl, Duare, and, naturally, under
the circumstances, I could not question him concerning her. I
therefore respected his grief and his silence, and left him to his
own sad thoughts.

Shortly after dawn the following morning the ship got under way.
I wished that I might have been on deck to view the fascinating
sights of this strange world, and my precarious situation as a
prisoner of the hated Thorists engendered less regret than the fact
that I, the first earth man to sail the seas of Venus, was doomed
to be cooped up in a stuffy hole below deck where I could see
nothing. But if I had feared being kept below for the duration of
the voyage, I was soon disillusioned, for shortly after the ship
got under way we were all ordered on deck and set to scrubbing and
polishing.

As we came up from below, the ship was just passing between the
two headlands that formed the entrance to the harbor, in the wake
of the larger vessel; and I obtained an excellent view of the
adjacent land, the shore that we were leaving, and the wide expanse
of ocean stretching away to the horizon.

The headlands were rocky promontories clothed with verdure of
delicate hues and supporting comparatively few trees, which were of
a smaller variety than the giants upon the mainland. These latter
presented a truly awe inspiring spectacle from the open sea to the
eyes of an earth man, their mighty boles rearing their weirdly
colored foliage straight up for five thousand feet, where they were
lost to view among the clouds. But I was not permitted to gaze for
long upon the wonders of the scene. I had not been ordered above
for the purpose of satisfying the esthetic longings of my soul.

Kamlot and I were set to cleaning and polishing guns. There were
a number of these on either side of the deck, one at the stern, and
two on the tower deck. I was surprised when I saw them, for there
had been no sign of armament when I came on board the preceding
day; but I was not long in discovering the explanation—the
guns were mounted on disappearing carriages, and when lowered, a
sliding hatch, flush with the deck, concealed them.

The barrels of these pieces were about eight inches in diameter,
while the bore was scarcely larger than my little finger; the
sights were ingenious and complicated, but there was no breech
block in evidence nor any opening into a breech, unless there was
one hidden beneath a hoop that encircled the breech, to which it
was heavily bolted. The only thing that I could discover that might
have been a firing device projected from the rear of the breech and
resembled the rotating crank that is used to revolve the breech
block in some types of earthly guns.

The barrels of the guns were about fifteen feet long and of the
same diameter from breech to muzzle. When in action they can be
extended beyond the rail of the ship about two thirds of their
length, thus affording a wider horizontal range and more deck room,
which would be of value on a ship such as that on which I was a
captive, which was of narrow beam.

"What do these guns fire?" I asked Kamlot, who was working at my
side.

"T-rays," he replied.

"Do those differ materially from the R-rays you described when
you were telling me about the small arms used by the Thorans?"

"The R-ray destroys only animal tissue," he replied, "while
there is nothing that the T-ray may not dissipate. It is a most
dangerous ray to work with because even the material of the gun
barrel itself is not wholly impervious to it, and the only reason
that it can be used at all is that its greatest force is expended
along the line of least resistance, which in this case naturally is
the bore of the gun. But eventually it destroys the gun
itself."

"How is it fired?" I asked.

He touched the crank at the end of the breech. "By turning this,
a shutter is raised that permits radiations from element 93 to
impinge on the charge, which consists of element 97, thus releasing
the deadly T-ray."

"Why couldn't we turn this gun about and rake the ship above
deck," I suggested, "thus wiping out the Thorans and giving us our
freedom?"

He pointed to a small, irregular hole in the end of the crank
shaft. "Because we haven't the key that fits this," he replied.

"Who has the key?"

"The officers have keys to the guns they command," he replied.
"In the captain's cabin are keys to all the guns, and he carries a
master key that will unlock any of them. At least that was the
system in the ancient Vepajan navy, and it is doubtless the same
today in the Thoran navy."

"I wish we could get hold of the master key," I said.

"So do I," he agreed, "but that is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible," I retorted.

He made no answer, and I did not pursue the subject, but I
certainly gave it a lot of thought.

As I worked, I noted the easy, noiseless propulsion of the ship
and asked Kamlot what drove it. His explanation was long and rather
technical; suffice it to say that the very useful element 93
(vik-ro) is here again employed upon a substance called lor, which
contains a considerable proportion of the element yor-san (105).
The action of vik-ro upon yor-san results in absolute annihilation
of the lor, releasing all its energy. When you consider that there
is eighteen thousand million times as much energy liberated by the
annihilation of a ton of coal than by its combustion you will
appreciate the inherent possibilities of this marvellous Venusian
scientific discovery. Fuel for the life of the ship could be
carried in a pint jar.

I noticed as the day progressed that we cruised parallel to a
coast line, after crossing one stretch of ocean where no land was
in sight, and thereafter for several days I noted the same
fact—land was almost always in sight. This suggested that the
land area of Venus might be much greater in proportion to its seas;
but I had no opportunity to satisfy my curiosity on that point, and
of course I took no stock in the maps that Danus had shown me,
since the Amtorians' conception of the shape of their world
precluded the existence of any dependable maps.

Kamlot and I had been separated, he having been detailed to duty
in the ship's galley, which was located in the forward part of the
main deck house aft. I struck up a friendship with Honan; but we
did not work together, and at night we were usually so tired that
we conversed but little before falling asleep on the hard floor of
our prison. One night, however, the sorrow of Kamlot having been
brought to my mind by my own regretful recollections of the
nameless girl of the garden, I asked Honan who Duare was.

"She is the hope of Vepaja," he replied, "perhaps the hope of a
world."

Constant association breeds a certain
camaraderie even between enemies. As the days passed, the
hatred and contempt which the common sailors appeared to have
harbored for us when we first came aboard the ship were replaced by
an almost friendly familiarity, as though they had discovered that
we were not half bad fellows after all; and, for my part, I found
much to like in these simple though ignorant men. That they were
the dupes of unscrupulous leaders is about the worst that may be
said of them. Most of them were kindly and generous; but their
ignorance made them gullible, and their emotions were easily
aroused by specious arguments that would have made no impression
upon intelligent minds.

Naturally, I became better acquainted with my fellow prisoners
than with my guards, and our relations were soon established upon a
friendly basis. They were greatly impressed by my blond hair and
blue eyes which elicited inquiries as to my genesis. As I answered
their questions truthfully, they became deeply interested in my
story, and every evening after the day's work was completed I was
besieged for tales of the mysterious, far distant world from which
I came. Unlike the highly intelligent Vepajans, they believed all
that I told them, with the result that I was soon a hero in their
eyes; I should have been a god had they had any conception of
deities of any description.

In turn, I questioned them; and discovered, with no surprise,
that they were not at all contented with their lots. The former
free men among them had long since come to the realization that
they had exchanged this freedom, and their status of wage earners,
for slavery to the state, that could no longer be hidden by a
nominal equality.

Among the prisoners were three to whom I was particularly
attracted by certain individual characteristics in each. There was
Gamfor, for instance, a huge, hulking fellow who had been a farmer
in the old days under the jongs. He was unusually intelligent, and
although he had taken part in the revolution, he was now bitter in
his denunciation of the Thorists, though this he was careful to
whisper to me in secrecy.

Another was Kiron, the soldier, a clean-limbed, handsome,
athletic fellow who had served in the army of the jong, but
mutinied with the others at the time of the revolution. He was
being disciplined now for insubordination to an officer who had
been a petty government clerk before his promotion.

The third had been a slave. His name was Zog. What he lacked in
intelligence he made up in strength and good nature. He had killed
an officer who had struck him and was being taken back to Thora for
trial and execution. Zog was proud of the fact that he was a free
man, though he admitted that the edge was taken off his enthusiasm
by the fact that every one else was free and the realization that
he had enjoyed more freedom as a slave than he did now as a
freeman.

"Then," he explained, "I had one master; now I have as many
masters as there are government officials, spies, and soldiers,
none of whom cares anything about me, while my old master was kind
to me and looked after my welfare."

"Would you like to be really free?" I asked him, for a plan had
been slowly forming in my mind.

But to my surprise he said, "No, I should rather be a
slave."

"But you'd like to choose your own master, wouldn't you?" I
demanded.

"Certainly," he replied, "if I could find some one who would be
kind to me and protect me from the Thorists."

"And if you could escape from them now, you would like to do
so?"

"Of course! But what do you mean? I cannot escape from
them."

"Not without help," I agreed, "but if others would join you,
would you make the attempt?"

"Why not? They are taking me back to Thora to kill me. I could
be no worse off, no matter what I did. But why do you ask all these
questions?"

"If we could get enough to join us, there is no reason why we
should not be free," I told him. "When you are free, you may remain
free or choose a master to your liking." I watched closely for his
reaction.

"You mean another revolution?" he asked. "It would fail. Others
have tried, but they have always failed."

"Not a revolution," I assured him, "just a break for
liberty."

"But how could we do it?"

"It would not be difficult for a few men to take this ship," I
suggested. "The discipline is poor, the night watches consist of
too few men; they are so sure of themselves that they would be
taken completely by surprise."

Zog's eyes lighted. "If we were successful, many of the crew
would join us," he said. "Few of them are happy; nearly all of them
hate their officers. I think the prisoners would join us almost to
a man, but you must be careful of spies—they are everywhere.
That is the greatest danger you would have to face. There can be no
doubt but there is at least one spy among us prisoners."

"How about Gamfor," I asked; "is he all right?"

"You can depend upon Gamfor," Zog assured me. "He does not say
much, but in his eyes I can read his hatred of them."

"And Kiron?"

"Just the man!" exclaimed Zog. "He despises them, and he does
not care who knows it; that is the reason he is a prisoner. This is
not his first offense, and it is rumored that he will be executed
for high treason."

"But I thought that he only talked back to an officer and
refused to obey him," I said.

"That is high treason—if they wish to get rid of a man,"
explained Zog. "You can depend on Kiron. Do you wish me to speak to
him about the matter?"

"No," I told him. "I will speak to him and to Gamfor; then if
anything goes wrong before we are ready to strike, if a spy gets
wind of our plot, you will not be implicated."

"I do not care about that," he exclaimed. "They can kill me for
but one thing, and it makes no difference which thing it is they
kill me for."

"Nevertheless, I shall speak to them, and if they will join us,
we can then decide together how to approach others."

Zog and I had been working together scrubbing the deck at the
time, and it was not until night that I had an opportunity to speak
with Gamfor and Kiron. Both were enthusiastic about the plan, but
neither thought that there was much likelihood that it would
succeed. However, each assured me of his support; and then we found
Zog, and the four of us discussed details throughout half the
night. We had withdrawn to a far corner of the room in which we
were confined and spoke in low whispers with our heads close
together.

The next few days were spent in approaching recruits—a
very ticklish business, since they all assured me that it was
almost a foregone conclusion that there was a spy among us. Each
man had to be sounded out by devious means, and it had been decided
that this work should be left to Gamfor and Kiron. I was eliminated
because of my lack of knowledge concerning the hopes, ambitions,
and the grievances of these people, or their psychology; Zog was
eliminated because the work required a much higher standard of
intelligence than he possessed.

Gamfor warned Kiron not to divulge our plan to any prisoner who
too openly avowed his hatred of the Thorists. "This is a time-worn
trick that all spies adopt to lull the suspicions of those they
suspect of harboring treasonable thoughts, and to tempt them into
avowing their apostasy. Select men whom you know to have a real
grievance, and who are moody and silent," he counselled.

I was a little concerned about our ability to navigate the ship
in the event that we succeeded in capturing her, and I discussed
this matter with both Gamfor and Kiron. What I learned from them
was illuminating, if not particularly helpful.

The Amtorians have developed a compass similar to ours.
According to Kiron, it points always toward the center of
Amtor—that is, toward the center of the mythical circular
area called Strabol, or Hot Country. This statement assured me that
I was in the southern hemisphere of the planet, the needle of the
compass, of course, pointing north toward the north magnetic pole.
Having no sun, moon, nor stars, their navigation is all done by
dead reckoning; but they have developed instruments of extreme
delicacy that locate land at great distances, accurately indicating
this distance and the direction; others that determine speed,
mileage, and drift, as well as a depth gauge wherewith they may
record soundings anywhere within a radius of a mile from the
ship.

All of their instruments for measuring distances utilize the
radio-activity of the nuclei of various elements to accomplish
their ends. The gamma ray, for which they have, of course, another
name, being uninfluenced by the most powerful magnetic forces, is
naturally the ideal medium for their purposes. It moves in a
straight line and at uniform speed until it meets an obstruction,
where, even though it may not be deflected, it is retarded, the
instrument recording such retardation and the distance at which it
occurs. The sounding device utilizes the same principle. The
instrument records the distance from the ship at which the ray
encounters the resistance of the ocean's bottom; by constructing a
right triangle with this distance representing the hypotenuse it is
simple to compute both the depth of the ocean and the distance from
the ship at which bottom was found, for they have a triangle of
which one side and all three angles are known.

Owing to their extremely faulty maps, however, the value of
these instruments has been greatly reduced, for no matter what
course they lay, other than due north, if they move in a straight
line they are always approaching the antarctic regions. They may
know that land is ahead and its distance, but they are never sure
what land it is, except where the journey is a short and familiar
one. For this reason they cruise within sight of land wherever that
is practical, with the result that journeys that might otherwise be
short are greatly protracted. Another result is that the radius of
Amtorian maritime exploration has been greatly circumscribed; so
much so that I believe there are enormous areas in the south
temperate zone that have never been discovered by the Vepajans or
the Thorists, while the very existence of the northern hemisphere
is even unguessed by them. On the maps that Danus showed me
considerable areas contained nothing but the single word
joram, ocean.

However, notwithstanding all this (and possibly because of it),
I was confident that we could manage to navigate the ship quite as
satisfactorily as her present officers, and in this Kiron
agreed.

"At least we know the general direction of Thora," he argued;
"so all we have to do is sail in the other direction."

As our plans matured, the feasibility of the undertaking
appeared more and more certain. We had recruited twenty prisoners,
five of whom were Vepajans, and this little band we organized into
a secret order with passwords, which were changed daily, signs, and
a grip, the last reminiscent of my fraternity days in college. We
also adopted a name. We called ourselves Soldiers of Liberty. I was
chosen vookor, or captain. Gamfor, Kiron, Zog, and Honan were my
principal lieutenants, though I told them that Kamlot would be
second in command if we were successful in taking the ship.

Our plan of action was worked out in detail; each man knew
exactly what was expected of him. Certain men were to overpower the
watch, others were to go to the officers' quarters and secure their
weapons and keys; then we would confront the crew and offer those
who chose an opportunity to join us. The others—well, there I
was confronted with a problem. Almost to a man the Soldiers of
Liberty wanted to destroy all those who would not join us, and
really there seemed no alternative; but I still hoped that I could
work out a more humane disposition of them.

There was one man among the prisoners of whom we were all
suspicious. He had an evil face, but that was not his sole claim
upon our suspicions—he was too loud in his denunciation of
Thorism. We watched him carefully, avoiding him whenever we could,
and each member of the band was warned to be careful when talking
to him. It was evident to Gamfor first that this fellow, whose name
was Anoos, was suspicious. He persisted in seeking out various
members of our group and engaging them in conversation which he
always led around to the subject of Thorism and his hatred of it,
and he constantly questioned each of us about the others, always
insinuating that he feared certain ones were spies. But of course
we had expected something of this sort, and we felt that we had
guarded against it. The fellow might be as suspicious of us as he
wished; so long as he had no evidence against us I did not see how
he could harm us.

One day Kiron came to me evidently laboring under suppressed
excitement. It was at the end of the day, and our food had just
been issued to us for the evening meal—dried fish and a hard,
dark-colored bread made of coarse meal.

"I have news, Carson," he whispered.

"Let us go off in a corner and eat," I suggested, and we
strolled away together, laughing and talking of the day's events in
our normal voices. As we seated ourselves upon the floor to eat our
poor food, Zog joined us.

"Sit close to us, Zog," directed Kiron; "I have something to say
that no one but a Soldier of Liberty may hear."

He did not say Soldier of Liberty, but "kung, kung, kung," which
are the Amtorian initials of the order's title. Kung is the name of
the Amtorian character that represents the k sound in our
language, and when I first translated the initials I was compelled
to smile at the similarity they bore to those of a well-known
secret order in the United States of America.

"While I am talking," Kiron admonished us, "you must laugh
often, as though I were telling a humorous tale; then, perhaps, no
one will suspect that I am not.

"Today I was working in the ship's armory, cleaning pistols," he
commenced. "The soldier who guarded me is an old friend of mine; we
served together in the army of the jong. He is as a brother to me.
For either the other would die. We talked of old times under the
banners of the jong and compared those days with these, especially
we compared the officers of the old regime with those of the
present. Like me and like every old soldier, he hates his officers;
so we had a pleasant time together.

"Finally he said to me, quite suddenly, 'What is this I hear of
a conspiracy among the prisoners?'

"That almost took me off my feet; but I showed no emotion, for
there are times when one must not trust even a brother. 'What have
you heard?' I asked.

"'I overheard one of the officers speaking to another,' he told
me. 'He said that a man named Anoos had reported the matter to the
captain, and that the captain had told Anoos to get the names of
all the prisoners whom he knew to be involved in the conspiracy and
to learn their plans if he possibly could.'

"'And what did Anoos say?' I asked my friend.

"'He said that if the captain would give him a bottle of wine he
believed that he could get one of the conspirators drunk and worm
the story from him. So the captain gave him a bottle of wine. That
was today.'

"My friend looked at me very closely, and then he said, 'Kiron,
we are more than brothers. If I can help you, you have but to
ask.'

"I knew this, and knowing how close to discovery we already
were, I decided to confide in him and enlist his aid; so I told
him. I hope you do not feel that I did wrong, Carson."

"By no means," I assured him. "We have been forced to tell
others of our plans whom we knew and trusted less well than you
know and trust your friend. What did he say when you had told
him?"

"He said that he would help us, and that when we struck he would
join us. He promised, too, that many others of the soldiers would
do likewise; but the most important thing he did was to give me a
key to the armory."

"Good!" I exclaimed. "There is no reason now why we should not
strike at once."

"Tonight?" asked Zog eagerly.

"Tonight!" I replied. "Pass the word to Gamfor and Honan, and
you four to the other Soldiers of Liberty."

We all laughed heartily, as though some one had told a most
amusing story, and then Kiron and Zog left me, to acquaint Gamfor
and Honan with our plan.

But upon Venus as upon earth, the best laid plans of mice and
men "gang aft a-gley," which is slang for haywire. Every night
since we had sailed from the harbor of Vepaja the hatch had been
left off our ill-smelling prison to afford us ventilation, a single
member of the watch patrolling near to see that none of us came
out; but tonight the hatch was closed.

"This," growled Kiron, "is the result of Anoos's work."

"We shall have to strike by daylight," I whispered, "but we
cannot pass the word tonight. It is so dark down here that we
should certainly be overheard by some one outside our own number if
we attempted it."

"Tomorrow then," said Kiron.

I was a long time getting to sleep that night, for my mind was
troubled by fears for our entire plan. It was obvious now that the
captain was suspicious, and that while he might not know anything
of the details of what we purposed, he did know that something was
in the air, and he was taking no chances.

During the night, as I lay awake trying to plan for the morrow,
I heard some one prowling around the room, and now and again a
whisper. I could only wonder who it was and try to guess what he
was about. I recalled the bottle of wine that Anoos was supposed to
have, and it occurred to me that he might be giving a party, but
the voices were too subdued to bear out that theory. Finally I
heard a muffled cry, a noise that sounded like a brief scuffle, and
then silence again fell upon the chamber.

"Some one had a bad dream," I thought and fell asleep.

Morning came at last, and the hatch was removed, letting a
little light in to dissipate the gloom of our prison. A sailor
lowered a basket containing the food for our meager breakfast. We
gathered about it and each took his share, and moved away to eat
it, when suddenly there was a cry from the far side of the
room.

Yes, Anoos had been murdered, and there
was a great hue and cry, much more of a hue and cry, it seemed to
me, than the death of an ordinary prisoner should have aroused.
Officers and soldiers swarmed in our quarters. They found Anoos
stretched out on his back, a bottle of wine at his side. His throat
was discolored where powerful fingers had crushed it. Anoos had
been choked to death.

Soon they herded us on deck, where we were searched for weapons
following an order from the captain of the ship, who had come
forward to conduct an investigation. He was angry and excited and,
I believe, somewhat frightened. One by one, he questioned us. When
it was my turn to be questioned, I did not tell him what I had
heard during the night; I told him that I had slept all night on
the far side of the room from where Anoos's body was
discovered.

"Were you acquainted with the dead man?" he asked.

"No more so than with any of the other prisoners," I
replied.

"But you are very well acquainted with some of them," he said
rather pointedly, I thought. "Have you ever spoken with the
man?"

"Yes, he has talked to me on several occasions."

"About what?" demanded the captain.

"Principally about his grievances against the Thorists."

"But he was a Thorist," exclaimed the captain.

I knew that he was trying to pump me to discover if I harbored
any suspicions concerning the actual status of Anoos, but he was
not clever enough to succeed. "I certainly would never had
suspected it from his conversation," I replied. "If he were a
Thorist, he must have been a traitor to his country, for he
continually sought to enlist my interest in a plan to seize the
ship and murder all her officers. I think he approached others,
also." I spoke in a tone loud enough to be heard by all, for I
wanted the Soldiers of Liberty to take the cue from me. If enough
of us told the same story it might convince the officers that
Anoos's tale of a conspiracy was hatched in his own brain and
worked up by his own efforts in an attempt to reap commendation and
reward from his superiors, a trick by no means foreign to the
ethics of spies.

"Did he succeed in persuading any of the prisoners to join him?"
asked the captain.

"I think not; they all laughed at him."

"Have you any idea who murdered him?"

"Probably some patriot who resented his treason," I lied
glibly.

As he questioned the other men along similar lines, I was
pleased to discover that nearly every one of the Soldiers of
Liberty had been approached by the perfidious Anoos, whose
traitorous overtures they had virtuously repulsed. Zog said that he
had never talked with the man, which, to the best of my knowledge,
was the truth.

When the captain finished his investigation, he was farther from
the truth than when he commenced it, for I am certain that he went
aft convinced that there had been no truth in the tales that Anoos
had carried to him.

I had been considerably worried at the time we were being
searched, for fear that the key to the armory would be discovered
on Kiron, but it had not been, and later he told me that he had
hidden it in his hair the night before as a precaution against just
such an eventuality as had occurred.

The Amtorian day consists of 26 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds of
earth time, which the Amtorians divide into twenty equal periods
called te, which, for clarity, I shall translate into its nearest
earthly equivalent, hour, although it contains 80.895 earth
minutes. On shipboard, the hours are sounded by a trumpeter, there
being a distinguishing bar of music for each hour of the day. The
first hour, or one o'clock, corresponds to mean sunrise. It is then
that the prisoners are awakened and given food; forty minutes later
they start work, which continues until the tenth hour, with a short
recess for food in the middle of the day. Occasionally we were
allowed to quit work at the ninth and even the eighth hour,
according to the caprices of our masters.

On this day the Soldiers of Liberty congregated during the
midday rest period, and, my mind being definitely determined on
immediate action, I passed the word around that we would strike
during the afternoon at the moment the trumpeter sounded the
seventh hour. As many of us as were working aft near the armory
were to make a dash for it with Kiron, who would unlock it in the
event that it were locked. The remainder were to attack the
soldiers nearest them with anything that they could use as weapons,
or with their bare hands if they had no weapons, and take the
soldiers' pistols and swords from them. Five of us were to account
for the officers. Half of our number was to constantly shout our
battle cry, "For liberty!" The other half was instructed to urge
the remaining prisoners and the soldiers to join us.

It was a mad scheme and one in which only desperate men could
have found hope.

The seventh hour was chosen because at that time the officers
were nearly all congregated in the wardroom, where a light meal and
wine were served them daily. We should have preferred launching our
plan at night, but we feared a continuation of the practice of
locking us below deck would prevent, and our experience with Anoos
had taught us that we might expect the whole conspiracy to be
divulged by another spy at any time; therefore we dared not
wait.

I must confess to a feeling of increasing excitement as the hour
approached. As, from time to time, I glanced at the other members
of our little band, I thought that I could note signs of
nervousness in some of them, while others worked on as placidly as
though nothing unusual was about to occur. Zog was one of these. He
was working near me. He never glanced toward the tower deck from
which the trumpeter would presently sound the fateful notes, though
it was with difficulty that I kept my eyes from it at all. No one
would have thought that Zog was planning to attack the soldier
lolling near him, nor have imagined that the night before he had
murdered a man. He was humming a tune, as he polished the barrel of
the big gun on which he was working.

Gamfor and, fortunately, Kiron were working aft, scrubbing the
deck, and I saw that Kiron kept scrubbing closer and closer to the
door of the armory. How I wished for Kamlot as the crucial moment
approached! He could have done so much to insure the success of our
coup, and yet he did not even know that such a stroke was
contemplated, much less that it was so soon to be launched.

As I glanced about, I met Zog's gaze. Very solemnly he closed
his left eye. At last he had given a sign that he was alert and
ready. It was a little thing, but it put new heart into me. For
some reason, during the past half hour I had felt very much
alone.

The time was approaching the zero hour. I moved closer to my
guard, so that I stood directly in front of him with my back toward
him. I knew precisely what I was going to do, and I knew that it
would be successful. Little did the man behind me dream that in a
minute, or perhaps a few seconds, he would be lying senseless on
the deck, or that the man he guarded would be carrying his sword,
his dagger, and his pistol as the last notes of the seventh hour
floated sweetly out across the calm waters of this Amtorian
sea.

My back was now toward the deck houses. I could not see the
trumpeter when he emerged from the tower to sound the hour, but I
knew that it could not be long now before he stepped out onto the
tower deck. Yet when the first note sounded I was as startled as
though I had expected it never to sound. I presume it was the
reaction after the long period of nervous tension.

My nervousness, however, was all mental; it did not affect my
physical reactions to the needs of the moment. As the first note
came softly down to my awaiting ears, I pivoted on a heel and swung
my right for the chin of my unsuspecting guard. It was one of those
blows that is often described as a haymaker, and it made hay. The
fellow dropped in his tracks. As I stooped to recover his arms,
pandemonium broke loose upon the deck. There were shrieks and
groans and curses, and above all rose the war cry of the Soldiers
of Liberty—my band had struck, and it had struck hard.

For the first time now, I heard the weird staccato hiss of
Amtorian firearms. You have heard an X-ray machine in operation? It
was like that, but louder and more sinister. I had wrenched the
sword and pistol from the scabbard and holster of my fallen guard,
not taking the time to remove his belt. Now I faced the scene for
which I had so long waited. I saw the powerful Zog wrest the
weapons from a soldier, and then lift the man's body above his head
and cast it overboard. Evidently Zog had no time for
proselytizing.

At the door to the armory a battle was being waged; men were
trying to enter, and soldiers were shooting them down. I ran in
that direction. A soldier leaped in front of me, and I heard the
hiss of the death rays that must have passed close to my body, as
he tried to stop me. He must have been either nervous or a very
poor shot, for he missed me. I turned my own weapon upon him and
pressed the lever. The man slumped to the deck with a hole in his
chest, and I ran on.

The fight at the door of the armory was hand to hand with
swords, daggers, and fists, for by now the members of the two
factions were so intermingled that none dared use a firearm for
fear of injuring a comrade. Into this melee I leaped. Tucking the
pistol into the band of my G string, I ran my sword through a great
brute who was about to knife Honan; then I grabbed another by the
hair and dragged him from the door, shouting to Honan to finish him
—it took too long to run a sword into a man and then pull it
out again. What I wanted was to get into the armory to Kiron's side
and help him.

All the time I could hear my men shouting, "For liberty!" or
urging the soldiers to join us—as far as I had been able to
judge, all the prisoners had already done so. Now another soldier
barred my way. His back was toward me, and I was about to seize him
and hurl him back to Honan and the others who were fighting at his
side, when I saw him slip his dagger into the heart of a soldier in
front of him and, as he did so, cry, "For liberty!" Here was one
convert at least. I did not know it then, but at that time there
were already many such.

When I finally got into the armory, I found Kiron issuing arms
as fast as he could pass them out. Many of the mutineers were
crawling through the windows of the room to get weapons, and to
each of these Kiron passed several swords and pistols, directing
the men to distribute them on deck.

Seeing that all was right here, I gathered a handful of men and
started up the companionway to the upper decks, from which the
officers were firing down upon the mutineers and, I may say, upon
their own men as well. In fact, it was this heartless and stupid
procedure that swung many of the soldiers to our side. Almost the
first man I saw as I leaped to the level of the second deck was
Kamlot. He had a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, and
he was firing rapidly at a group of officers who were evidently
attempting to reach the main deck to take command of the loyal
soldiers there.

You may be assured that it did my heart good to see my friend
again, and as I ran to his side and opened fire on the officers, he
flashed me a quick smile of recognition.

Three of the five officers opposing us had fallen, and now the
remaining two turned and fled up the companionway to the top deck.
Behind us were twenty or more mutineers eager to reach the highest
deck, where all the surviving officers had now taken refuge, and I
could see more mutineers crowding up the companionway from the main
deck to join their fellows. Kamlot and I led the way to the next
deck, but at the head of the companionway the surging mob of
howling, cursing mutineers brushed past us to hurl themselves upon
the officers.

The men were absolutely out of control, and as there were but
few of my original little band of Soldiers of Liberty among them,
the majority of them knew no leader, with the result that it was
every man for himself. I wished to protect the officers, and it had
been my intention to do so; but I was helpless to avert the bloody
orgy that ensued with a resulting loss of life entirely
disproportionate to the needs of the occasion.

The officers, fighting for their lives with their backs against
a wall, took heavy toll of the mutineers, but they were eventually
overwhelmed by superior numbers. Each of the common soldiers and
sailors appeared to have a special grudge to settle either with
some individual officer or with them all as a class and for the
time all were transformed into maniacal furies, as time and again
they charged the last fortress of authority, the oval tower on the
upper deck.

Each officer that fell, either killed or wounded, was hurled
over the rail to the deck below, where willing hands cast the body
to the main deck from which, in turn, it was thrown into the sea.
And then, at last, the mutineers gained access to the tower, from
which they dragged the remaining officers, butchering them on the
upper deck or hurling them to their shrieking fellows below.

The captain was the last to be dragged out. They had found him
hiding in a cupboard in his cabin. At sight of him arose such a
scream of hate and rage as I hope never to hear again. Kamlot and I
were standing at one side, helpless witnesses of this holocaust of
hate. We saw them literally tear the captain to pieces and cast him
into the sea.

With the death of the captain the battle was over, the ship was
ours. My plan had succeeded, but the thought suddenly assailed me
that I had created a terrible power that it might be beyond me to
control. I touched Kamlot on the arm. "Follow me," I directed and
started for the main deck.

"Who is at the bottom of this?" asked Kamlot as we forced our
way among the excited mutineers.

"The mutiny was my plan, but not the massacre," I replied. "Now
we must attempt to restore order out of chaos."

"If we can," he remarked dubiously.

As I made my way toward the main deck, I collected as many of
the original band of Soldiers of Liberty as we passed, and when I
finally reached my destination, I gathered most of them about me.
Among the mutineers I had discovered the trumpeter who had
unknowingly sounded the signal for the outbreak, and him I caused
to sound the call that should assemble all hands on the main deck.
Whether or not the notes of the trumpet would be obeyed, I did not
know, but so strong is the habit of discipline among trained men
that immediately the call sounded the men began to pour onto the
deck from all parts of the vessel.

I mounted the breech of one of the guns, and, surrounded by my
faithful band, I announced that the Soldiers of Liberty had taken
over the ship, that those who wished to accompany us must obey the
vookor of the band; the others would be put ashore.

"Who is vookor?" demanded a soldier whom I recognized as one of
those who had been most violent in the attack upon the
officers.

"I am," I replied.

"The vookor should be one of us," he growled.

"Carson planned the mutiny and carried it to success," shouted
Kiron. "Carson is vookor."

From the throats of all my original band and from a hundred new
recruits rose a cheer of approval, but there were many who remained
silent or spoke in grumbling undertones to those nearest them.
Among these was Kodj, the soldier who had objected to my
leadership, and I saw that already a faction was gathering about
him.

"It is necessary," I said, "that all men return at once to their
duties, for the ship must be handled, no matter who commands. If
there is any question about leadership, that can be settled later.
In the meantime, I am in command; Kamlot, Gamfor, Kiron, Zog, and
Honan are my lieutenants; with me, they will officer the ship. All
weapons must be turned over immediately to Kiron at the armory,
except those carried by men regularly detailed by him for guard
duty."

"No one is going to disarm me," blustered Kodj. "I have as much
right to carry weapons as anyone. We are all free men now. I take
orders from no one."

Zog, who had edged closer to him as he spoke, seized him by the
throat with one of his huge hands and with the other tore the belt
from about his hips. "You take orders from the new vookor or you go
overboard," he growled, as he released the man and handed his
weapons to Kiron.

For a moment there was silence, and there was a tenseness in the
situation that boded ill; then some one laughed and cried, "No one
is going to disarm me," mimicking Kodj. That brought a general
laugh, and I knew that for the time being the danger was over.
Kiron, sensing that the moment was ripe, ordered the men to come to
the armory and turn in their weapons, and the remainder of the
original band herded them aft in his wake.

It was an hour before even a semblance of order or routine had
been reestablished. Kamlot, Gamfor, and I were gathered in the
chart room in the tower. Our consort was hull down below the
horizon, and we were discussing the means that should be adopted to
capture her without bloodshed and rescue Duare and the other
Vepajan prisoners aboard her. The idea had been in my mind from the
very inception of the plan to seize our own ship, and it had been
the first subject that Kamlot had broached after we had succeeded
in quieting the men and restoring order; but Gamfor was frankly
dubious concerning the feasibility of the project.

"The men are not interested in the welfare of Vepajans," he
reminded us, "and they may resent the idea of endangering their
lives and risking their new-found liberty in a venture that means
nothing whatever to them."

"How do you feel about it, personally?" I asked him.

"I am under your orders," he replied; "I will do anything that
you command, but I am only one—you have two hundred whose
wishes you must consult."

"Inform the other officers that we shall attack the
Sovong at daybreak," I instructed them.

"But we dare not fire on her," protested Kamlot, "lest we
endanger the life of Duare."

"I intend boarding her," I replied. "There will be no one but
the watch on deck at that hour. On two other occasions the ships
have been brought close together on a calm sea; so our approach
will arouse no suspicion. The boarding party will consist of a
hundred men who will remain concealed until the command to board is
given when the ships are alongside one another. At that hour in the
morning the sea is usually calm; if it is not calm tomorrow morning
we shall have to postpone the attack until another morning.

"Issue strict orders that there is to be no slaughter; no one is
to be killed who does not resist. We shall remove all of the
Sovong's small arms and the bulk of her provisions, as well
as the Vepajan prisoners, to the Sofal."

"And then what do you propose doing?" asked Gamfor.

"I am coming to that," I replied, "but first I wish to ascertain
the temper of the men aboard the Sofal. You and Kamlot will
inform the other officers of my plans insofar as I have explained
them; then assemble the original members of the Soldiers of Liberty
and explain my intentions to them. When this has been done,
instruct them to disseminate the information among the remainder of
the ship's company, reporting to you the names of all those who do
not receive the plan with favor. These we shall leave aboard the
Sovong with any others who may elect to transfer to her. At
the eleventh hour muster the men on the main deck. At that time I
will explain my plans in detail."

After Kamlot and Gamfor had departed to carry out my orders, I
returned to the chart room. The Sofal, moving ahead at
increased speed, was slowly overhauling the Sovong, though
not at a rate that might suggest pursuit. I was certain that the
Sovong knew nothing of what had transpired upon her sister
ship, for the Amtorians are unacquainted with wireless
communication, and there had been no time for the officers of the
Sofal to signal their fellows aboard the Sovong, so
suddenly had the mutiny broken and so quickly had it been carried
to a conclusion.

As the eleventh hour approached, I noticed little groups of men
congregated in different parts of the ship, evidently discussing
the information that the Soldiers of Liberty had spread among them.
One group, larger than the others, was being violently harangued by
a loud-mouthed orator whom I recognized as Kodj. It had been
apparent from the first that the fellow was a trouble maker. Just
how much influence he had, I did not know; but I felt that whatever
it was, it would be used against me. I hoped to be rid of him after
we had taken the Sovong.

The men congregated rapidly as the trumpeter sounded the hour,
and I came down the companionway to address them. I stood just
above them, on one of the lower steps, where I could overlook them
and be seen by all. Most of them were quiet and appeared attentive.
There was one small group muttering and whispering—Kodj was
its center.

"At daybreak we shall board and take the Sovong," I
commenced. "You will receive your orders from your immediate
officers, but I wish to emphasize one in particular—there is
to be no unnecessary killing. After we have taken the ship we shall
transfer to the Sofal such provisions, weapons, and
prisoners as we wish to take with us. At this time, also, we shall
transfer from the Sofal to the Sovong all of you who
do not wish to remain on this ship under my command, as well as
those whom I do not care to take with me," and as I said this, I
looked straight at Kodj and the malcontents surrounding him.

"I shall explain what I have in mind for the future, so that
each of you may be able to determine between now and daybreak
whether he cares to become a member of my company. Those who do
will be required to obey orders but they will share in the profits
of the cruise, if there are profits. The purposes of the expedition
are twofold: To prey on Thorist shipping and to explore the unknown
portions of Amtor after we have returned the Vepajan prisoners to
their own country.

"There will be excitement and adventure; there will be danger,
too; and I want no cowards along, nor any trouble makers. There
should be profits, for I am assured that richly laden Thorist ships
constantly ply the known seas of Amtor; and I am informed that we
can always find a ready market for such spoils of war as fall into
our hands—and war it shall be, with the Soldiers of Liberty
fighting the oppression and tyranny of Thorism.

"Return to your quarters now, and be prepared to give a good
account of yourselves at daybreak."

I got little sleep that night. My officers
were constantly coming to me with reports. From these I learned,
what was of the greatest importance to me, the temper of the crew.
None was averse to taking the Sovong, but there was a
divergence of opinion as to what we should do thereafter. A few
wanted to be landed on Thoran soil, so that they could make their
way back to their homes; the majority was enthusiastic about
plundering merchant ships; the idea of exploring the unknown waters
of Amtor filled most of them with fear; some were averse to
restoring the Vepajan prisoners to their own country; and there was
an active and extremely vocal minority that insisted that the
command of the vessel should be placed in the hands of Thorans. In
this I could see the hand of Kodj even before they told me that the
suggestion had come from the coterie that formed his following.

"But there are fully a hundred," said Gamfor, "upon whose
loyalty you may depend. These have accepted you as their leader,
and they will follow you and obey your commands."

"Arm these," I directed, "and place all others below deck until
after we have taken the Sovong. How about the klangan? They
took no part in the mutiny. Are they for us or against us?"

Kiron laughed. "They received no orders one way or the other,"
he explained. "They have no initiative. Unless they are motivated
by such primitive instincts as hunger, love, or hate, they do
nothing without orders from a superior."

"And they don't care who their master is," interjected Zog.
"They serve loyally enough until their master dies, or sells them,
or gives them away, or is overthrown; then they transfer the same
loyalty to a new master."

"They have been told that you are their new master," said
Kamlot, "and they will obey you."

As there were only five of the birdmen aboard the Sofal,
I had not been greatly exercised about their stand; but I was glad
to learn that they would not be antagonistic.

At the twentieth hour I ordered the hundred upon whom we could
depend assembled and held in the lower deck house, the others
having all been confined below earlier in the night, in the
accomplishment of which a second mutiny was averted only by the
fact that all the men had been previously disarmed except the loyal
Soldiers of Liberty.

All during the night we had been gradually gaining upon the
unsuspecting Sovong until now we were scarcely a hundred
yards astern of her, slightly aport. Across our starboard bow I
could see her looming darkly in the mysterious nocturnal glow of
the moonless Amtorian night, her lanterns white and colored points
of light, her watch dimly visible upon her decks.

Closer and closer the Sofal crept toward her prey. A
Soldier of Liberty, who had once been an officer in the Thoran
navy, was at the wheel; no one was on deck but the members of the
watch; in the lower deck house a hundred men were huddled waiting
for the command to board; I stood beside Honan in the chart room
(he was to command the Sofal while I led the boarding
party), my eyes upon the strange Amtorian chronometer. I spoke a
word to him and he moved a lever. The Sofal crept a little
closer to the Sovong. Then Honan whispered an order to the
helmsman and we closed in upon our prey.

I hastened down the companionway to the main deck and gave the
signal to Kamlot standing in the doorway of the deck house. The two
ships were close now and almost abreast. The sea was calm; only a
gentle swell raised and lowered the softly gliding ships. Now we
were so close that a man could step across the intervening space
from the deck of one ship to that of the other.

The officer of the watch aboard the Sovong hailed us.
"What are you about?" he demanded. "Sheer off, there!"

For answer I ran across the deck of the Sofal and leaped
aboard the other ship, a hundred silent men following in my wake.
There was no shouting and little noise—only the shuffling of
sandalled feet and the subdued clank of arms.

Behind us the grappling hooks were thrown over the rail of the
Sovong. Every man had been instructed as to the part he was
to play. Leaving Kamlot in command on the main deck, I ran to the
tower deck with a dozen men, while Kiron led a score of fighting
men to the second deck where most of the officers were
quartered.

Before the officer of the watch could gather his scattered wits,
I had him covered with a pistol. "Keep quiet," I whispered, "and
you will not be harmed." My plan was to take as many of them as
possible before a general alarm could be sounded and thus minimize
the necessity for bloodshed; therefore, the need for silence. I
turned him over to one of my men after disarming him; and then I
sought the captain, while two of my detachment attended to the
helmsman.

I found the officer for whom I sought reaching for his weapons.
He had been awakened by the unavoidable noise of the boarding
party, and, suspecting that something was amiss, had seized his
weapons as he arose and uncovered the lights in his cabin.

I was upon him as he raised his pistol, and struck it from his
hand before he could fire; but he stepped back with his sword on
guard, and thus we stood facing one another for a moment.

"Surrender," I told him, "and you will not be harmed."

"Who are you?" he demanded, "and where did you come from?"

"I was a prisoner on board the Sofal," I replied, "but
now I command her. If you wish to avoid bloodshed, come out on deck
with me and give the command to surrender."

"And then what?" he demanded. "Why have you boarded us if not to
kill?"

"To take off provisions, weapons, and the Vepajan prisoners," I
explained.

Suddenly the hissing staccato of pistol fire came up to us from
the deck below.

"I thought there was to be no killing!" he snapped.

"If you want to stop it, get out there and give the command to
surrender," I replied.

"I don't believe you," he cried. "It's a trick," and he came at
me with his sword.

I did not wish to shoot him down in cold blood, and so I met his
attack with my own blade. The advantage was on his side in the
matter of skill, for I had not yet fully accustomed myself to the
use of the Amtorian sword; but I had an advantage in strength and
reach and in some tricks of German swordplay that I had learned
while I was in Germany. The Amtorian sword is primarily a cutting
weapon, its weight near the tip making it particularly effective
for this method of attack, though it lessens its effectiveness in
parrying thrusts, rendering it a rather sluggish defensive weapon.
I therefore found myself facing a savage cutting attack against
which I had difficulty in defending myself. The officer was an
active man and skillful with the sword. Being experienced, it did
not take him long to discover that I was a novice, with the result
that he pressed his advantage viciously, so that I soon regretted
my magnanimity in not resorting to my pistol before the encounter
began; but it was too late now—the fellow kept me so busy
that I had no opportunity to draw the weapon.

He forced me back and around the room until he stood between me
and the doorway, and then, having me where no chance for escape
remained he set to work to finish me with dispatch. The duel, as
far as I was concerned, was fought wholly on the defensive. So
swift and persistent was his attack that I could only defend
myself, and not once in the first two minutes of the encounter did
I aim a single blow at him.

I wondered what had become of the men who had accompanied me;
but pride would not permit me to call upon them for help, nor did I
learn until later that it would have availed me nothing, since they
were having all that they could attend to in repelling the attack
of several officers who had run up from below immediately behind
them.

The teeth of my antagonist were bared in a grim and ferocious
smile, as he battered relentlessly at my guard, as though he
already sensed victory and was gloating in anticipation. The
clanging of steel on steel now drowned all sounds from beyond the
four walls of the cabin where we fought; I could not tell if
fighting were continuing in other parts of the ship, nor, if it
were, whether it were going in our favor or against us. I realized
that I must know these things, that I was responsible for
whatever took place aboard the Sovong, and that I must get
out of that cabin and lead my men either in victory or defeat.

Such thoughts made my position even more impossible than as
though only my life were at stake and drove me to attempt heroic
measures for releasing myself from my predicament and my peril. I
must destroy my adversary, and I must do so at once!

He had me now with my back almost against the wall. Already his
point had touched me upon the cheek once and twice upon the body,
and though the wounds were but scratches, I was covered with blood.
Now he leaped upon me in a frenzy of determination to have done
with me instantly, but this time I did not fall back. I parried his
cut, so that his sword passed to the right of my body which was now
close to his; and then I drew back my point, and, before he could
recover himself, drove it through his heart.

As he sagged to the floor, I jerked my sword from his body and
ran from his cabin. The entire episode had required but a few
minutes, though it had seemed much longer to me, yet in that brief
time much had occurred on the decks and in the cabins of the
Sovong. The upper decks were cleared of living enemies; one
of my own men was at the wheel, another at the controls; there was
still fighting on the main deck where some of the Sovong's
officers were making a desperate last stand with a handful of their
men. But by the time I reached the scene of the battle, it was
over; the officers, assured by Kamlot that their lives would be
spared, had surrendered—the Sovong was ours. The
Sofal had taken her first prize!

As I sprang into the midst of the excited warriors on the main
deck, I must have presented a sorry spectacle, bleeding, as I was,
from my three wounds; but my men greeted me with loud cheers. I
learned later that my absence from the fighting on the main deck
had been noticed and had made a poor impression on my men, but when
they saw me return bearing the scars of combat, my place in their
esteem was secured. Those three little scratches proved of great
value to me, but they were as nothing in comparison with the
psychological effect produced by the wholly disproportionate amount
of blood they had spilled upon my naked hide.

We now quickly rounded up our prisoners and disarmed them.
Kamlot took a detachment of men and released the Vepajan captives
whom he transferred at once to the Sofal. They were nearly
all women, but I did not see them as they were taken from the ship,
being engaged with other matters. I could imagine, though, the joy
in the hearts of Kamlot and Duare at this reunion, which the latter
at least had probably never even dared to hope for.

Rapidly we transferred all of the small arms of the
Sovong to the Sofal, leaving only sufficient to equip
the officers of the ill-starred vessel. This work was entrusted to
Kiron and was carried out by our own men, while Gamfor, with a
contingent of our new-made prisoners, carried all of the
Sovong's surplus provisions aboard our own ship. This done,
I ordered all the Sovong's guns thrown overboard—by
that much at least I would cripple the power of Thora. The last act
in this drama of the sea was to march our one hundred imprisoned
malcontents from the Sofal to the Sovong and present
them to the latter's new commander with my compliments. He did not
seem greatly pleased, however, nor could I blame him. Neither were
the prisoners pleased. Many of them begged me to take them back
aboard the Sofal; but I already had more men than I felt
were needed to navigate and defend the ship; and each of the
prisoners had been reported as having expressed disapproval of some
part or all of our plan; so that I, who must have absolute loyalty
and cooperation, considered them valueless to me.

Kodj, strange to say, was the most persistent. He almost went on
his knees as he pleaded with me to permit him to remain with the
Sofal, and he promised me such loyalty as man had never
known before; but I had had enough of Kodj and told him so. Then,
when he found that I could not be moved, he turned upon me,
swearing by all his ancestors that he would get even with me yet,
even though it took a thousand years.

Returning to the deck of the Sofal, I ordered the
grappling hooks cast off, and presently the two ships were under
way again, the Sovong proceeding toward the Thoran port that
was her destination, the Sofal back toward Vepaja. Now, for
the first time, I had opportunity to inquire into our losses and
found that we had suffered four killed and twenty-one wounded, the
casualties among the crew of the Sovong having been much
higher.

For the greater part of the remainder of the day I was busy with
my officers organizing the personnel of the Sofal and
systematizing the activities of this new and unfamiliar venture, in
which work Kiron and Gamfor were of inestimable value; and it was
not until late in the afternoon that I had an opportunity to
inquire into the welfare of the rescued Vepajan captives. When I
asked Kamlot about them, he said that they were none the worse for
their captivity aboard the Sovong.

"You see, these raiding parties have orders to bring the women
to Thora unharmed and in good condition," he explained. "They are
destined for more important persons than ships' officers, and that
is their safeguard.

"However, Duare said that notwithstanding this, the captain made
advances to her. I wish I might have known it while I was still
aboard the Sovong, that I might have killed him for his
presumption." Kamlot's tone was bitter and he showed signs of
unusual excitement.

"Let your mind rest at ease," I begged him; "Duare has been
avenged."

"What do you mean?"

"I killed the captain myself," I explained.

He clapped a hand upon my shoulder, his eyes alight with
pleasure. "Again you have won the undying gratitude of Vepaja," he
cried. "I wish that it might have been my good fortune to have
killed the beast and thus wiped out the insult upon Vepaja, but if
I could not be the one, then I am glad that it was you, Carson,
rather than another."

I thought that he took the matter rather seriously and was
placing too much importance upon the action of the Sovong's
captain, since it had resulted in no harm to the girl; but then, of
course, I realized that love plays strange tricks upon a man's
mental processes, so that an affront to a mistress might be
magnified to the proportions of a national calamity.

"Well, it is all over now," I said, "and your sweetheart has
been returned to you safe and sound."

At that he looked horrified. "My sweetheart!" he exclaimed. "In
the name of the ancestors of all the jongs! Do you mean to tell me
that you do not know who Duare is?"

"I thought of course that she was the girl you loved," I
confessed. "Who is she?"

"Of course I love her," he explained; "all Vepaja loves
her—she is the virgin daughter of a Vepajan jong!"

Had he been announcing the presence of a goddess on shipboard,
his tone could have been no more reverential and awed. I endeavored
to appear more impressed than I was, lest I offend him.

"Had she been the woman of your choice," I said, "I should have
been even more pleased to have had a part in her rescue than had
she been the daughter of a dozen jongs."

"That is nice of you," he replied, "but do not let other
Vepajans hear you say such things. You have told me of the
divinities of that strange world from which you come; the persons
of the jong and his children are similarly sacred to us."

"Then, of course, they shall be sacred to me," I assured
him.

"By the way, I have word for you that should please you—a
Vepajan would consider it a high honor. Duare desires to see you,
that she may thank you personally. It is irregular, of course; but
then circumstances have rendered strict adherence to the etiquette
and customs of our country impracticable, if not impossible.
Several hundred men already have looked upon her, many have spoken
to her, and nearly all of them were enemies; so it can do no harm
if she sees and speaks with her defenders and her friends."

I did not understand what he was driving at, but I assented to
what he had said and told him that I would pay my respects to the
princess before the day was over.

I was very busy; and, if the truth must be told, I was not
particularly excited about visiting the princess. In fact, I rather
dreaded it, for I am not particularly keen about fawning and
kotowing to royalty or anything else; but I decided that out of
respect for Kamlot's feelings I must get the thing over as soon as
possible, and after he had left to attend to some duty, I made my
way to the quarters allotted to Duare on the second deck.

The Amtorians do not knock on a door—they whistle. It is
rather an improvement, I think, upon our custom. One has one's own
distinctive whistle. Some of them are quite elaborate airs. One
soon learns to recognize the signals of one's friends. A knock
merely informs you that some one wishes to enter; a whistle tells
you the same thing and also reveals the identity of your
caller.

My signal, which is very simple, consists of two short low notes
followed by a higher longer note; and as I stood before the door of
Duare and sounded this, my mind was not upon the princess within
but upon another girl far away in the tree city of Kooaad, in
Vepaja. She was often in my mind—the girl whom I had glimpsed
but twice, to whom I had spoken but once and that time to avow a
love that had enveloped me as completely, spontaneously, and
irrevocably as would death upon some future day.

In response to my signal a soft, feminine voice bade me enter. I
stepped into the room and faced Duare. At sight of me her eyes went
wide and a quick flush mounted her cheeks. "You!" she
exclaimed.

I was equally dumfounded—she was the girl from the garden
of the jong!

What a strange contretemps! Its
suddenness left me temporarily speechless; the embarrassment of
Duare was only too obvious. Yet it was that unusual paradox, a
happy contretemps—for me at least.

I advanced toward her, and there must have been a great deal
more in my eyes than I realized, for she shrank back, flushing even
more deeply than before.

"Don't touch me!" she whispered. "Don't dare!"

"Have I ever harmed you?" I asked.

That question seemed to bring her confidence. She shook her
head. "No," she admitted, "you never have—physically. I sent
for you to thank you for the service you have already rendered me;
but I did not know it was you. I did not know that the
Carson they spoke of was the man who—" She stopped there and
looked at me appealingly.

"The man who told you in the garden of the jong that he loved
you," I prompted her.

"Don't!" she cried. "Can it be that you do not realize the
offensiveness, the criminality of such a declaration?"

"Is it a crime to love you?" I asked.

"It is a crime to tell me so," she replied with something of
haughtiness.

"Then I am a confirmed criminal," I replied, "for I cannot help
telling you that I love you, whenever I see you."

"If that is the case, you must not see me again, for you must
never again speak those words to me," she said decisively. "Because
of the service you have rendered me, I forgive you your past
offenses; but do not repeat them."

"What if I can't help it?" I inquired.

"You must help it," she stated seriously; "it is a matter of
life and death to you."

Her words puzzled me. "I do not understand what you mean," I
admitted.

"Kamlot, Honan, any of the Vepajans aboard this ship would kill
you if they knew," she replied. "The jong, my father, would have
you destroyed upon our return to Vepaja—it would all depend
upon whom I told first."

I came a little closer to her and looked straight into her eyes.
"You would never tell," I whispered.

"Why not? What makes you think that?" she demanded, but her
voice quavered a little.

"Because you want me to love you," I challenged her.

She stamped her foot angrily. "You are beyond reason or
forbearance or decency!" she exclaimed. "Leave my cabin at once; I
do not wish ever to see you again."

Her bosom was heaving, her beautiful eyes were flashing, she was
very close to me, and an impulse seized me to take her in my arms.
I wanted to crush her body to mine, I wanted to cover her lips with
kisses; but more than all else I wanted her love, and so I
restrained myself, for fear that I might go too far and lose the
chance to win the love that I felt was hovering just below the
threshold of her consciousness. I do not know why I was so sure of
that, but I was. I could not have brought myself to force my
attentions upon a woman to whom they were repugnant, but from the
first moment that I had seen this girl watching me from the garden
in Vepaja, I had been impressed by an inner consciousness of her
interest in me, her more than simple interest. It was just one of
those things that are the children of old Chand Kabi's training, a
training that has made me infinitely more intuitive than a woman.
"I am sorry that you are sending me away into virtual exile," I
said. "I do not feel that I deserve that, but of course the
standards of your world are not the standards of mine. There, a
woman is not dishonored by the love of a man, or by its avowal,
unless she is already married to another," and then of a sudden a
thought occurred to me that should have occurred before. "Do you
already belong to some man?" I demanded, chilled by the thought.
"Of course not!" she snapped. "I am not yet nineteen." I wondered
that it had never before occurred to me that the girl in the garden
of the jong might be already married.

I did not know what that had to do with it, but I was glad to
learn that she was not seven hundred years old. I had often
wondered about her age, though after all it could have made no
difference, since on Venus, if anywhere in the universe, people are
really no older than they look—I mean, as far as their
attractiveness is concerned.

"Are you going?" she demanded, "or shall I have to call one of
the Vepajans and tell them that you have affronted me?"

"And have me killed?" I asked. "No, you cannot make me believe
that you would ever do that."

"Then I shall leave," she stated, "and remember that you
are never to see me or speak to me again."

With that parting and far from cheering ultimatum she quit the
room, going into another of her suite. That appeared to end the
interview; I could not very well follow her, and so I turned and
made my way disconsolately to the captain's cabin in the tower.

As I thought the matter over, it became obvious to me that I not
only had not made much progress in my suit, but that there was
little likelihood that I ever should. There seemed to be some
insuperable barrier between us, though what it was I could not
imagine. I could not believe that she was entirely indifferent to
me; but perhaps that was just a reflection of my egotism, for I had
to admit that she had certainly made it plain enough both by words
and acts that she wished to have nothing to do with me. I was
unquestionably persona non grata.

Notwithstanding all this, or maybe because of it, I realized
that this second and longer interview had but served to raise my
passion to still greater heat, leaving me in a fine state of
despair. Her near presence on board the Sofal was constantly
provocative, while her interdiction of any relations between us
only tended to make me more anxious to be with her. I was most
unhappy, and the monotony of the now uneventful voyage back toward
Vepaja offered no means of distraction. I wished that we might
sight another vessel, for any ship that we sighted would be an
enemy ship. We were outlaws, we of the Sofal—pirates,
buccaneers, privateers. I rather leaned toward the last and most
polite definition of our status. Of course we had not as yet been
commissioned by Mintep to raid shipping for Vepaja, but we were
striking at Vepaja's enemies, and so I felt that we had some claim
upon the dubious respectability of privateerism. However, either of
the other two titles would not have greatly depressed me. Buccaneer
has a devil-may-care ring to it that appeals to my fancy; it has a
trifle more haut ton than pirate.

There is much in a name. I had liked the name of the
Sofal from the first. Perhaps it was the psychology of that
name that suggested the career upon which I was now launched. It
means killer. The verb meaning kill is fal. The prefix
so has the same value as the suffix er in English; so
sofal means killer. Vong is the Amtorian word for defend;
therefore, Sovong, the name of our first prize, means
defender; but the Sovong had not lived up to her name.

I was still meditating on names in an effort to forget Duare,
when Kamlot joined me, and I decided to take the opportunity to ask
him some questions concerning certain Amtorian customs that
regulated the social intercourse between men and maids. He opened a
way to the subject by asking me if I had seen Duare since she sent
for me.

"I saw her," I replied, "but I do not understand her attitude,
which suggested that it was almost a crime for me to look at
her."

"It would be under ordinary circumstances," he told me, "but of
course, as I explained to you before, what she and we have passed
through has temporarily at least minimized the importance of
certain time-honored Vepajan laws and customs.

"Vepajan girls attain their majority at the age of twenty; prior
to that they may not form a union with a man. The custom, which has
almost the force of a law, places even greater restrictions upon
the daughters of a jong. They may not even see or speak to any man
other than their blood relatives and a few well-chosen retainers
until after they have reached their twentieth birthday. Should they
transgress, it would mean disgrace for them and death for the
man."

"What a fool law!" I ejaculated, but I realized at last how
heinous my transgression must have appeared in the eyes of
Duare.

Kamlot shrugged. "It may be a fool law," he said, "but it is
still the law; and in the case of Duare its enforcement means much
to Vepaja, for she is the hope of Vepaja."

I had heard that title conferred upon her before, but it was
meaningless to me. "Just what do you mean by saying that she is the
hope of Vepaja?" I asked.

"She is Mintep's only child. He has never had a son, though a
hundred women have sought to bear him one. The life of the dynasty
ends if Duare bears no son; and if she is to bear a son, then it is
essential that the father of that son be one fitted to be the
father of a jong."

"Have they selected the father of her children yet?" I
asked.

"Of course not," replied Kamlot. "The matter will not even be
broached until after Duare has passed her twentieth birthday."

"And she is not even nineteen yet," I remarked with a sigh.

"No," agreed Kamlot, eyeing me closely, "but you act as though
that fact were of importance to you."

"It is," I admitted.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"I intend to marry Duare!"

Kamlot leaped to his feet and whipped our his sword. It was the
first time that I had ever seen him show marked excitement. I
thought he was going to kill me on the spot.

"Defend yourself!" he cried. "I cannot kill you until you
draw."

"Just why do you wish to kill me at all?" I demanded. "Have you
gone crazy?"

The point of Kamlot's sword dropped slowly toward the floor. "I
do not wish to kill you," he said rather sadly, all the nervous
excitement gone from his manner. "You are my friend, you have saved
my life—no, I would rather die myself than kill you, but the
thing you have just said demands it."

I shrugged my shoulders; the thing was inexplicable to me. "What
did I say that demands death?" I demanded.

"That you intend to marry Duare."

"In my world," I told him, "men are killed for saying that they
do not intend marrying some girl." I had been sitting at the
desk in my cabin at the time that Kamlot had threatened me, and I
had not arisen; now I stood up and faced him. "You had better kill
me, Kamlot," I said, "for I spoke the truth."

He hesitated for a moment, standing there looking at me; then he
returned his sword to its scabbard. "I cannot," he said huskily.
"May my ancestors forgive me! I cannot kill my friend.

"Perhaps," he added, seeking some extenuating circumstance, "you
should not be held accountable to customs of which you had no
knowledge. I often forget that you are of another world than ours.
But tell me, now that I have made myself a party to your crime by
excusing it, what leads you to believe that you will marry Duare? I
can incriminate myself no more by listening to you further."

"I intend to marry her, because I know that I love her and
believe that she already half loves me."

At this Kamlot appeared shocked and horrified again. "That is
impossible," he cried. "She never saw you before; she cannot dream
what is in your heart or your mad brain."

"On the contrary, she has seen me before; and she knows quite
well what is in my 'mad brain,'" I assured him. "I told her in
Kooaad; I told her again today."

"And she listened?"

"She was shocked," I admitted, "but she listened; then she
upbraided me and ordered me from her presence."

Kamlot breathed a sigh of relief. "At least she has not
gone mad. I cannot understand on what you base your belief that she
may return your love."

"Her eyes betrayed her; and, what may be more convincing, she
did not expose my perfidy and thus send me to my death."

He pondered that and shook his head. "It is all madness," he
said; "I can make nothing of it. You say that you talked with her
in Kooaad, but that would have been impossible. But if you had ever
even seen her before, why did you show so little interest in her
fate when you knew that she was a prisoner aboard the
Sovong? Why did you say that you thought that she was my
sweetheart?"

"I did not know until a few minutes ago," I explained, "that the
girl I saw and talked with in the garden at Kooaad was Duare, the
daughter of the jong."

A few days later I was again talking with Kamlot in my cabin
when we were interrupted by a whistle at the door; and when I had
bade him do so, one of the Vepajan prisoners that we had rescued
from the Sovong entered. He was not from Kooaad but from
another city of Vepaja, and therefore none of the other Vepajans
aboard knew anything concerning him. His name was Vilor, and he
appeared to be a decent sort of fellow, though rather inclined to
taciturnity. He had manifested considerable interest in the
klangans and was with them often, but had explained this
idiosyncrasy on the grounds that he was a scholar and wished to
study the birdmen, specimens of which he had never before seen.

"I have come," he explained in response to my inquiry, "to ask
you to appoint me an officer. I should like to join your company
and share in the work and responsibilities of the expedition."

"We are well officered now," I explained, "and have all the men
we need. Furthermore," I added frankly, "I do not know you well
enough to be sure of your qualifications. By the time we reach
Vejapa, we shall be better acquainted; and if I need you then, I
will tell you."

"Well, I should like to do something," he insisted. "May I guard
the janjong until we reach Vepaja?"

He referred to Duare, whose title, compounded of the two words
daughter and king, is synonymous to princess. I thought that I
noticed just a trace of excitement in his voice as he made the
request.

"She is well guarded now," I explained.

"But I should like to do it," he insisted. "It would be a
service of love and loyalty for my jong. I could stand the night
guard; no one likes that detail ordinarily."

"It will not be necessary," I said shortly; "the guard is
already sufficient."

"She is in the after cabins of the second deck house, is she
not?" he asked.

I told him that she was.

"And she has a special guard?"

"A man is always before her door at night," I assured him.

"Only one?" he demanded, as though he thought the guard
insufficient.

"In addition to the regular watch, we consider one man enough;
she has no enemies aboard the Sofal." These people were
certainly solicitous of the welfare and safety of their royalty, I
thought; and, it seemed to me, unnecessarily so. But finally Vilor
gave up and departed, after begging me to give his request further
thought.

"He seems even more concerned about the welfare of Duare than
you," I remarked to Kamlot after Vilor had gone.

"Yes, I noticed that," replied my lieutenant.

"There is no one more concerned about her than I," I said, "but
I cannot see that any further precautions are necessary."

"Nor I," agreed Kamlot; "she is quite well protected now."

We had dropped Vilor from our minds and were discussing other
matters, when we heard the voice of the lookout in the crow's nest
shouting, "Voo notar!" ("A ship!") Running to the tower deck, we
got the bearings of the stranger as the lookout announced them the
second time, and, sure enough, almost directly abeam on the
starboard side we discerned the superstructure of a ship on the
horizon.

For some reason which I do not clearly understand, the
visibility on Venus is usually exceptionally good. Low fogs and
haze are rare, notwithstanding the humidity of the atmosphere. This
condition may be due to the mysterious radiation from that strange
element in the planet's structure which illuminates her moonless
nights; I do not know.

At any rate, we could see a ship, and almost immediately all was
excitement aboard the Sofal. Here was another prize, and the
men were eager to be at her. As we changed our course and headed
for our victim, a cheer rose from the men on deck. Weapons were
issued, the bow gun and the two tower guns were elevated to firing
positions. The Sofal forged ahead at full speed.

As we approached our quarry, we saw that it was a ship of about
the same size as the Sofal and bearing the insignia of
Thora. Closer inspection revealed it to be an armed
merchantman.

I now ordered all but the gunners into the lower deck house, as
I planned on boarding this vessel as I had the Sovong and
did not wish her to see our deck filled with armed men before we
came alongside. As before, explicit orders were issued; every man
knew what was expected of him; all were cautioned against needless
killing. If I were to be a pirate, I was going to be as humane a
pirate as possible. I would not spill blood needlessly.

I had questioned Kiron, Gamfor, and many another Thoran in my
company relative to the customs and practices of Thoran ships of
war until I felt reasonably familiar with them. I knew for instance
that a warship might search a merchantman. It was upon this that I
based my hope of getting our grappling hooks over the side of our
victim before he could suspect our true design.

When we were within hailing distance of the ship, I directed
Kiron to order her to shut down her engines, as we wished to board
and search her; and right then we ran into our first obstacle. It
came in the form of a pennant suddenly hoisted at the bow of our
intended victim. It meant nothing to me, but it did to Kiron and
the other Thorans aboard the Sofal.

"We'll not board her so easily after all," said Kiron. "She has
an ongyan on board, and that exempts her from search. It probably
also indicates that she carries a larger complement of soldiers
than a merchantman ordinarily does."

"Whose friend?" I asked, "Yours?" for ongyan means great friend,
in the sense of eminent or exalted.

Kiron smiled. "It is a title. There are a hundred klongyan in
the oligarchy; one of them is aboard that ship. They are great
friends unquestionably, great friends of themselves, they rule
Thora more tyranically than any jong and for themselves alone."

"How will the men feel about attacking a ship bearing so exalted
a personage?" I inquired.

"They will fight among themselves to be the first aboard and to
run a sword through him."

"They must not kill him," I replied. "I have a better plan."

"They will be hard to control once they are in the thick of a
fight," Kiron assured me; "I have yet to see the officer who can do
it. In the old days, in the days of the jongs, there were order and
discipline; but not now."

"There will be aboard the Sofal," I averred. "Come with
me; I am going to speak to the men."

Together we entered the lower deck house where the majority of
the ship's company was massed, waiting for the command to attack.
There were nearly a hundred rough and burly fighting men, nearly
all of whom were ignorant and brutal. We had been together as
commander and crew for too short a time for me to gauge their
sentiments toward me; but I realized that there must be no question
in any mind as to who was captain of the ship, no matter what they
thought of me.

Kiron had called them to attention as we entered, and now every
eye was on me as I started to speak. "We are about to take another
ship," I began, "on board which is one whom Kiron tells me you will
want to kill. He is an ongyan. I have come here to tell you that he
must not be killed." Growls of disapproval greeted this statement,
but, ignoring them, I continued, "I have come here to tell you
something else, because I have been informed that no officer can
control you after you enter battle. There are reasons why it will
be better for us to hold this man prisoner than to kill him, but
these have nothing to do with the question; what you must
understand is that my orders and the orders of your other officers
must be obeyed.

"We are embarked upon an enterprise that can succeed only if
discipline be enforced. I expect the enterprise to succeed. I will
enforce discipline. Insubordination or disobedience will be
punishable by death. That is all."

As I left the room, I left behind me nearly a hundred silent
men. There was nothing to indicate what their reaction had been.
Purposely, I took Kiron out with me; I wanted the men to have an
opportunity to discuss the matter among themselves without
interference by an officer. I knew that I had no real authority
over them, and that eventually they must decide for themselves
whether they would obey me; the sooner that decision was reached
the better for all of us.

Amtorian ships employ only the most primitive means of
intercommunication. There is a crude and cumbersome hand signalling
system in which flags are employed; then there is a standardized
system of trumpet calls which covers a fairly wide range of
conventional messages, but the most satisfactory medium and the the
most used is the human voice.

Since our quarry had displayed the pennant of the ongyan, we had
held a course parallel to hers and a little distance astern. On her
main deck a company of armed men was congregated She mounted four
guns, which had been elevated into firing position. She was ready,
but I think that as yet she suspected nothing wrong in our
intentions.

Now I gave orders that caused the Sofal to close in upon
the other ship, and as the distance between them lessened I saw
indications of increasing excitement on the decks of our intended
victim.

"What are you about?" shouted an officer from her tower deck.
"Stand off there! There is an ongyan aboard us."

As no reply was made to him, and as the Sofal continued
to draw nearer, his excitement waxed. He gesticulated rapidly as he
conversed with a fat man standing at his side; then he screamed,
"Stand off! or some one will suffer for this;" but the Sofal
only moved steadily closer. "Stand off, or I'll fire!" shouted the
captain.

For answer I caused all our starboard guns to be elevated into
firing position. I knew he would not dare fire now, for a single
broadside from the Sofal would have sunk him in less than a
minute, a contingency which I wished to avoid as much as he.

"What do you want of us?" he demanded.

"We want to board you," I replied, "without bloodshed if
possible."

"This is revolution! This is treason!" shouted the fat man at
the captain's side. "I order you to stand off and leave us alone. I
am the ongyan, Moosko," and then to the soldiers on the main deck
he screamed, "Repel them! Kill any man who sets foot upon that
deck!"

At the same moment that the ongyan,
Moosko, ordered his soldiers to repel any attempt to board his
ship, her captain ordered full speed ahead and threw her helm to
starboard. She veered away from us and leaped ahead in an effort to
escape. Of course I could have sunk her, but her loot would have
been of no value to me at the bottom of the sea; instead I directed
the trumpeter at my side to sound full speed ahead to the officer
in the tower, and the chase was on.

The Yan, whose name was now discernible across her stern,
was much faster than Kiron had led me to believe; but the
Sofal was exceptionally speedy, and it soon became obvious
to all that the other ship could not escape her. Slowly we regained
the distance that we had lost in the first, unexpected spurt of the
Yan; slowly but surely we were closing up on her. Then the
captain of the Yan did just what I should have done had I
been in his place; he kept the Sofal always directly astern
of him and opened fire on us with his after tower gun and with a
gun similarly placed in the stern on the lower deck. The maneuver
was tactically faultless, since it greatly reduced the number of
guns that we could bring into play without changing our course, and
was the only one that might offer him any hope of escape.

There was something eery in the sound of that first heavy
Amtorian gun that I had heard. I saw nothing, neither smoke nor
flame; there was only a loud staccato roar more reminiscent of
machine gun fire than of any other sound. At first there was no
other effect; then I saw a piece of our starboard rail go and two
of my men fall to the deck.

By this time our bow gun was in action. We were in the swell of
the Yan's wake, which made accurate firing difficult. The
two ships were racing ahead at full speed; the prow of the
Sofal was throwing white water and spume far to either side;
the sea in the wake of the Yan was boiling, and a heavy
swell that we were quartering kept the ships rolling. The thrill of
the chase and of battle was in our blood, and above all was the
venomous rattle of the big guns.

I ran to the bow to direct the fire of the gun there, and a
moment later we had the satisfaction of seeing the crew of one of
the Yan's guns crumple to the deck man by man, as our gunner
got his sights on them and mowed them down.

The Sofal was gaining rapidly upon the Yan, and
our guns were concentrating on the tower gun and the tower of the
enemy. The ongyan had long since disappeared from the upper deck,
having doubtlessly sought safety in a less exposed part of the
ship, and in fact there were only two men left alive upon the tower
deck where he had stood beside the captain; these were two of the
crew of the gun that was giving us most trouble.

I did not understand at the time why the guns of neither ship
were more effective. I knew that the T-ray was supposedly highly
destructive, and so I could not understand why neither ship had
been demolished or sunk; but that was because I had not yet learned
that all the vital parts of the ships were protected by a thin
armor of the same metal of which the large guns were composed, the
only substance at all impervious to the T-ray. Had this not been
true, our fire would have long since put the Yan out of
commission, as our T-rays, directed upon her after tower gun, would
have passed on through the tower, killing the men at the controls
and destroying the controls themselves. Eventually this would have
happened, but it would have been necessary first to have destroyed
the protective armor of the tower.

At last we succeeded in silencing the remaining gun, but if we
were to draw up alongside the Yan we must expose ourselves
to the fire of other guns located on her main deck and the forward
end of the tower. We had already suffered some losses, and I knew
that we must certainly expect a great many more if we put ourselves
in range of those other guns; but there seemed no other alternative
than to abandon the chase entirely, and that I had no mind to
do.

Giving orders to draw up along her port side, I directed the
fire of the bow gun along her rail where it would rake her port
guns one by one as we moved up on her, and gave orders that each of
our starboard guns in succession should open fire similarly as they
came within range of the Yan's guns. Thus we kept a steady
and continuous fire streaming upon the unhappy craft as we drew
alongside her and closed up the distance between us.

We had suffered a number of casualties, but our losses were
nothing compared to those of the Yan, whose decks were now
strewn with dead and dying men. Her plight was hopeless, and her
commander must at last have realized it, for now he gave the signal
of surrender and stopped his engines. A few minutes later we were
alongside and our boarding party had clambered over her rail.

As Kamlot and I stood watching these men who were being led by
Kiron to take possession of the prize and bring certain prisoners
aboard the Sofal, I could not but speculate upon what their
answer was to be to my challenge for leadership. I knew that their
freedom from the constant menace of their tyrannical masters was so
new to them that they might well be expected to commit excesses,
and I dreaded the result for I had determined to make an example of
any men who disobeyed me, though I fell in the attempt. I saw the
majority of them spread over the deck under the command of the
great Zog, while Kiron led a smaller detachment to the upper decks
in search of the captain and the ongyan.

Fully five minutes must have elapsed before I saw my lieutenant
emerge from the tower of the Yan with his two prisoners. He
conducted them down the companionway and across the main deck
toward the Sofal, while a hundred members of my pirate band
watched them in silence. Not a hand was raised against them as they
passed.

Kamlot breathed a sigh of relief as the two men clambered over
the rail of the Sofal and approached us. "I think that our
lives hung in the balance then, quite as much as theirs," he said,
and I agreed with him, for if my men had started killing aboard the
Yan in defiance of my orders, they would have had to kill me
and those loyal to me to protect their own lives.

The ongyan was still blustering when they were halted in front
of me, but the captain was awed. There was something about the
whole incident that mystified him, and when he got close enough to
me to see the color of my hair and eyes, I could see that he was
dumfounded.

"This is an outrage," shouted Moosko, the ongyan. "I will see
that every last man of you is destroyed for this." He was
trembling, and purple with rage.

"See that he does not speak again unless he is spoken to," I
instructed Kiron, and then I turned to the captain. "As soon as we
have taken what we wish from your ship," I told him, "you will be
free to continue your voyage. I am sorry that you did not see fit
to obey me when I ordered you to stop for boarding; it would have
saved many lives. The next time you are ordered to lay to by the
Sofal, do so; and when you return to your own country,
advise other shipmasters that the Sofal is abroad and that
she is to be obeyed."

"Do you mind telling me," he asked, "who you are and under what
flag you sail?"

"For the moment I am a Vepajan," I replied, "but we sail under
our own flag. No country is responsible for what we do, nor are we
responsible to any country."

Pressing the crew of the Yan into service, Kamlot, Kiron,
Gamfor, and Zog had all her weapons, such of her provisions as we
wished, and the most valuable and least bulky portion of her cargo
transferred to the Sofal before dark. We then threw her guns
overboard and let her proceed upon her way.

Moosko I retained as a hostage in the event that we should ever
need one; he was being held under guard on the main deck until I
could determine just what to do with him. The Vepajan women
captives we had rescued from the Sovong, together with our
own officers who were also quartered on the second deck, left me no
vacant cabin in which to put Moosko, and I did not wish to confine
him below deck in the hole reserved for common prisoners.

I chanced to mention the matter to Kamlot in the presence of
Vilor, when the latter immediately suggested that he would share
his own small cabin with Moosko and be responsible for him. As this
seemed an easy solution of the problem, I ordered Moosko turned
over to Vilor, who took him at once to his cabin.

The pursuit of the Yan had taken us off our course, and
now, as we headed once more toward Vepaja, a dark land mass was
dimly visible to starboard. I could not but wonder what mysteries
lay beyond that shadowy coast line, what strange beasts and men
inhabited that terra incognita that stretched away into
Strabol and the unexplored equatorial regions of Venus. To
partially satisfy my curiosity, I went to the chart room, and after
determining our position as accurately as I could by dead
reckoning, I discovered that we were off the shore of Noobol. I
remembered having heard Danus mention this country, but I could not
recall what he had told me about it.

Lured by imaginings, I went out onto the tower deck and stood
alone, looking out across the faintly illuminated nocturnal waters
of Amtor toward mysterious Noobol. The wind had risen to almost the
proportions of a gale, the first that I had encountered since my
coming to the Shepherd's Star; heavy seas were commencing to run,
but I had every confidence in the ship and in the ability of my
officers to navigate her under any circumstances; so I was not
perturbed by the increasing violence of the storm. It occurred to
me though that the women aboard might be frightened, and my
thoughts, which were seldom absent from her for long, returned to
Duare. Perhaps she was frightened!

Even no excuse is a good excuse to the man who wishes to see the
object of his infatuation; but now I prided myself that I had a
real reason for seeing her and one that she herself must
appreciate, since it was prompted by solicitude for her welfare.
And so I went down the companionway to the second deck with the
intention of whistling before the door of Duare; but as I had to
pass directly by Vilor's cabin, I thought that I would take the
opportunity to look in on my prisoner.

There was a moment's silence following my signal, and then Vilor
bade me enter. As I stepped into the cabin, I was surprised to see
an angan sitting there with Moosko and Vilor. Vilor's embarrassment
was obvious; Moosko appeared ill at ease and the birdman
frightened. That they were disconcerted did not surprise me, for it
is not customary for members of the superior race to fraternize
with klangan socially. But if they were embarrassed, I was not. I
was more inclined to be angry. The position of the Vepajans aboard
the Sofal was a delicate one. We were few in numbers, and
our ascendency depended wholly upon the respect we engendered and
maintained in the minds of the Thorans, who constituted the
majority of our company, and who looked up to the Vepajans as their
superiors despite the efforts of their leaders to convince them of
the equality of all men.

"Your quarters are forward," I said to the angan; "you do not
belong here."

"It is not his fault," said Vilor, as the birdman rose to leave
the cabin. "Moosko, strange as it may seem, had never seen an
angan; and I fetched this fellow here merely to satisfy his
curiosity. I am sorry if I did wrong."

"Of course," I said, "that puts a slightly different aspect on
the matter, but I think it will be better if the prisoner inspects
the klangan on deck where they belong. He has my permission to do
so tomorrow."

The angan departed, I exchanged a few more words with Vilor, and
then I left him with his prisoner and turned toward the after cabin
where Duare was quartered, the episode that had just occurred
fading from my mind almost immediately, to be replaced by far more
pleasant thoughts.

There was a light in Duare's cabin as I whistled before her
door, wondering if she would invite me in or ignore my presence.
For a time there was no response to my signal, and I had about
determined that she would not see me, when I heard her soft, low
voice inviting me to enter.

"You are persistent," she said, but there was less anger in her
voice than when last she had spoken to me.

"I came to ask if the storm has frightened you and to assure you
that there is no danger."

"I am not afraid," she replied. "Was that all that you wished to
say?"

It sounded very much like a dismissal. "No," I assured her, "nor
did I come solely for the purpose of saying it."

She raised her eyebrows. "What else could you have to say to
me—that you have not already said?"

"Perhaps I wished to repeat," I suggested.

"You must not!" she cried.

I came closer to her. "Look at me, Duare; look me in the eyes
and tell me that you do not like to hear me tell you that I love
you!"

Her eyes fell. "I must not listen!" she whispered and rose as
though to leave the room.

I was mad with love for her; her near presence sent the hot
blood boiling through my veins; I seized her in my arms and drew
her to me; before she could prevent it, I covered her lips with
mine. Then she partially tore away from me, and I saw a dagger
gleaming in her hand.

"You are right," I said. "Strike! I have done an unforgivable
thing. My only excuse is my great love for you; it swept away
reason and honor."

Her dagger hand dropped to her side. "I cannot," she sobbed,
and, turning, fled from the room.

I went back to my own cabin, cursing myself for a beast and a
cad. I could not understand how it had been possible for me to have
committed such an unpardonable act. I reviled myself, and at the
same time the memory of that soft body crushed against mine and
those perfect lips against my lips suffused me with a warm glow of
contentment that seemed far removed from repentance.

I lay awake for a long time after I went to bed, thinking of
Duare, recalling all that had ever passed between us. I found a
hidden meaning in her cry, "I must not listen!" I rejoiced in the
facts that once she had refused to consign me to death at the hands
of others and that again she had refused to kill me herself. Her "I
cannot" rang in my ears almost like an avowal of love. My better
judgment told that I was quite mad, but I found joy in hugging my
madness to me.

The storm increased to such terrific fury during the night that
the screeching of the wind and the wild plunging of the
Sofal awakened me just before dawn. Arising immediately, I
went on deck, where the wind almost carried me away. Great waves
lifted the Sofal on high, only to plunge her the next moment
into watery abysses. The ship was pitching violently; occasionally
a huge wave broke across her bow and flooded the main deck; across
her starboard quarter loomed a great land mass that seemed
perilously close. The situation appeared fraught with danger.

I entered the control room and found both Honan and Gamfor with
the helmsman. They were worried because of our proximity to land.
Should either the engines or the steering device fail, we must
inevitably be driven ashore. I told them to remain where they were,
and then I went down to the second deck house to arouse Kiron,
Kamlot, and Zog.

As I turned aft from the foot of the companionway on the second
deck, I noticed that the door of Vilor's cabin was swinging open
and closing again with each roll of the vessel; but I gave the
matter no particular thought at the time and passed on to awaken my
other lieutenants. Having done so, I kept on to Duare's cabin,
fearing that, if awake, she might be frightened by the rolling of
the ship and the shrieking of the wind. To my surprise, I found her
door swinging on its hinges.

Something, I do not know what, aroused my suspicion that all was
not right far more definitely than the rather unimportant fact that
the door to her outer cabin was unlatched. Stepping quickly inside,
I uncovered the light and glanced quickly about the room. There was
nothing amiss except, perhaps, the fact that the door to the inner
cabin where she slept was also open and swinging on its hinges. I
was sure that no one could be sleeping in there while both those
doors were swinging and banging. It was possible, of course, that
Duare was too frightened to get up and close them.

I stepped to the inner doorway and called her name aloud. There
was no reply. I called again, louder; again, silence was my only
answer. Now I was definitely perturbed. Stepping into the room, I
uncovered the light and looked at the bed. It was empty—Duare
was not there! But in the far corner of the cabin lay the body of
the man who had stood guard outside her door.

Throwing conventions overboard, I hastened to each of the
adjoining cabins where the rest of the Vepajan women were
quartered. All were there except Duare. They had not seen her; they
did not know where she was. Frantic from apprehension, I ran back
to Kamlot's cabin and acquainted him with my tragic discovery. He
was stunned.

"She must be on board," he cried. "Where else can she be?"

"I know she must be," I replied, "but something tells me
she is not. We must search the ship at once—from stem to
stern."

Zog and Kiron were emerging from their cabins as I came from
Kamlot's. I told them of my discovery and ordered the search
commenced; then I hailed a member of the watch and sent him to the
crow's nest to question the lookout. I wanted to know whether he
had seen anything unusual transpiring on the ship during his watch,
for from his lofty perch he could overlook the entire vessel.

"Muster every man," I told Kamlot; "account for every human
being on board; search every inch of the ship."

As the men left to obey my instructions, I recalled the
coincidence of the two cabin doors swinging wide—Duare's and
Vilor's. I could not imagine what relation either fact had to the
other, but I was investigating everything, whether it was of a
suspicious nature or not; so I ran quickly to Vilor's cabin, and
the moment that I uncovered the light I saw that both Vilor and
Moosko were missing. But where were they? No man could have left
the Sofal in that storm and lived, even could he have
launched a boat, which would have been impossible of
accomplishment, even in fair weather, without detection.

Coming from Vilor's cabin, I summoned a sailor and dispatched
him to inform Kamlot that Vilor and Moosko were missing from their
cabin and direct him to send them to me as soon as he located them;
then I returned to the quarters of the Vepajan women for the
purpose of questioning them more carefully.

I was puzzled by the disappearance of Moosko and Vilor, which,
taken in conjunction with the absence of Duare from her cabin,
constituted a mystery of major proportions; and I was trying to
discover some link of circumstance that might point a connection
between the two occurrences, when I suddenly recalled Vilor's
insistence that he be permitted to guard Duare. Here was the first,
faint suggestion of a connecting link. However, it seemed to lead
nowhere. These three people had disappeared from their cabins, yet
reason assured me that they would be found in a short time, since
it was impossible for them to leave the ship, unless---

It was that little word "unless" that terrified me most of all.
Since I had discovered that Duare was not in her cabin, a numbing
fear had assailed me that, considering herself dishonored by my
avowal of love, she had hurled herself overboard. Of what value now
the fact that I constantly upbraided myself for my lack of
consideration and control? Of what weight my vain regrets?

Yet now I saw a tiny ray of hope. If the absence of Vilor and
Moosko from their cabin and Duare from hers were more than a
coincidence, then it were safe to assume that they were together
and ridiculous to believe that all three had leaped overboard.

With these conflicting fears and hopes whirling through my
brain, I came to the quarters of the Vepajan women, which I was
about to enter when the sailor I had sent to question the lookout
in the crow's nest came running toward me in a state of evident
excitement.

"Well," I demanded, as, breathless, he halted before me, "what
did the lookout have to say?"

"Nothing, my captain," replied the man, his speech retarded by
excitement and exertion.

"Nothing! and why not?" I snapped.

"The lookout is dead, my captain," gasped the sailor.

"Dead!"

"Murdered."

"How?" I asked.

"A sword had been run through his body—from behind, I
think. He lay upon his face."

"Go at once and inform Kamlot; tell him to replace the lookout
and investigate his death, then to report to me."

Shaken by this ominous news, I entered the quarters of the
women. They were huddled together in one cabin, pale and
frightened, but outwardly calm.

"Have you found Duare?" one of them asked immediately.

"No," I replied, "but I have discovered another
mystery—the ongyan, Moosko, is missing and with him the
Vepajan, Vilor."

"Vepajan!" exclaimed Byea, the woman who had questioned me
concerning Duare. "Vilor is no Vepajan."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "If he is not a Vepajan, what is
he?"

"He is a Thoran spy," she replied. "He was sent to Vepaja long
ago to steal the secret of the longevity serum, and when we were
captured the klangan took him, also, by mistake. We learned this,
little by little, aboard the Sovong."

"But why was I not informed when he was brought aboard?" I
demanded.

"We supposed that everyone knew it," explained Byea, "and
thought that Vilor was transferred to the Sofal as a
prisoner."

Another link in the chain of accumulating evidence! Yet I was as
far as ever from knowing where either end of the chain lay.

After questioning the women, I went to the
main deck, too impatient to await the reports of my lieutenants in
the tower where I belonged. I found that they had searched the ship
and were just coming to me with their report. None of those
previously discovered missing had been found, but the search had
revealed another astounding fact—the five klangan also were
missing!

Searching certain portions of the ship had been rather dangerous
work, as she was rolling heavily, and the deck was still
occasionally swept by the larger seas; but it had been accomplished
without mishap, and the men were now congregated in a large room in
the main deck house. Kamlot, Gamfor, Kiron, Zog, and I had also
entered this same room, where we were discussing the whole
mysterious affair. Honan was in the control room of the tower.

I told them that I had just discovered that Vilor was not
Vepajan but a Thoran spy, and had reminded Kamlot of the man's
request that he be allowed to guard the janjong. "I learned
something else from Byea while I was questioning the women," I
added. "During their captivity aboard the Sovong, Vilor
persisted in annoying Duare with his attentions; he was infatuated
with her."

"I think that gives us the last bit of evidence we need to
enable us to reconstruct the hitherto seemingly inexplicable
happenings of the past night," said Gamfor. "Vilor wished to
possess Duare; Moosko wished to escape from captivity. The former
had fraternized with the klangan and made friends of them; that was
known to everyone aboard the Sofal. Moosko was an ongyan;
during all their lives, doubtless, the klangan have looked upon the
klongyan as the fountain heads of supreme authority. They would
believe his promises, and they would obey his commands.

"Doubtless Vilor and Moosko worked out the details of the plot
together. They dispatched an angan to kill the lookout, lest their
movements arouse suspicion and be reported before they could carry
their plan to a successful conclusion. The lookout disposed of, the
other klangan congregated in Vilor's cabin; then Vilor, probably
accompanied by Moosko, went to the cabin of Duare, where they
killed the guard and seized her in her sleep, silenced her with a
gag, and carried her to the gangway outside, where the klangan were
waiting.

"A gale was blowing, it is true, but it was blowing toward land
which lay but a short distance to starboard; and the klangan are
powerful fliers.

"There you have what I believe to be a true picture of what
happened aboard the Sofal while we slept."

"And you believe that the klangan carried these three people to
the shores of Noobol?" I asked.

"I think there can be no question but that such is the fact,"
replied Gamfor.

"I quite agree with him," interjected Kamlot.

"Then there is but one thing to do," I announced. "We must turn
back and land a searching party on Noobol."

"No boat could live in this sea," objected Kiron.

"The storm will not last forever," I reminded him. "We shall lie
off the shore until it abates. I am going up to the tower; I wish
you men would remain here and question the crew; it is possible
that there may be some one among them who has overheard something
that will cast new light on the subject. The klangan are great
talkers, and they may have dropped some remark that will suggest
the ultimate destination Vilor and Moosko had in mind."

As I stepped out onto the main deck, the Sofal rose upon
the crest of a great wave and then plunged nose downward into the
watery abyss beyond, tilting the deck forward at an angle of almost
forty-five degrees. The wet and slippery boards beneath my feet
gave them no hold, and I slid helplessly forward almost fifty feet
before I could check my descent. Then the ship buried her nose in a
mountainous wave and a great wall of water swept the deck from stem
to stern, picking me up and whirling me helplessly upon its
crest.

For a moment I was submerged, and then a vagary of the Titan
that had seized me brought my head above the water, and I saw the
Sofal rolling and pitching fifty feet away.

Even in the immensity of interstellar space I had never felt
more helpless nor more hopeless than I did at that moment on the
storm-lashed sea of an unknown world, surrounded by darkness and
chaos and what terrible creatures of this mysterious deep I could
not even guess. I was lost! Even if my comrades knew of the
disaster that had overwhelmed me, they were helpless to give me
aid. No boat could live in that sea, as Kiron had truly reminded
us, and no swimmer could breast the terrific onslaught of those
racing, wind-driven mountains of water that might no longer be
described by so puny a word as wave.

Hopeless! I should not have said that; I am never without hope.
If I could not swim against the sea, perhaps I might swim with it;
and at no great distance lay land. I am an experienced distance
swimmer and a powerful man. If any man could survive in such a sea,
I knew that I could; but if I could not, I was determined that I
should at least have the satisfaction of dying fighting.

I was hampered by no clothes, as one could scarcely dignify the
Amtorian loincloth with the name of clothing; my only impediment
was my weapons; and these I hesitated to discard, knowing that my
chances for survival on that unfriendly shore would be slight were
I unarmed. Neither the belt, nor the pistol, nor the dagger
inconvenienced me, and their weight was negligible; but the sword
was a different matter. If you have never tried swimming with a
sword dangling from your middle, do not attempt it in a heavy sea.
You might think that it would hang straight down and not get in the
way, but mine did not. The great waves hurled me about mercilessly,
twisting and turning me; and now my sword was buffeting me in some
tender spot, and now it was getting between my legs, and once, when
a wave turned me completely over, it came down on top of me and
struck me on the head; yet I would not discard it.

After the first few minutes of battling with the sea, I
concluded that I was in no immediate danger of being drowned. I
could keep my head above the waves often enough and long enough to
insure sufficient air for my lungs; and, the water being warm, I
was in no danger of being chilled to exhaustion, as so often occurs
when men are thrown into cold seas. Therefore, as closely as I
could anticipate any contingency in this unfamiliar world, there
remained but two major and immediate threats against my life. The
first lay in the possibility of attack by some ferocious monster of
the Amtorian deeps; the second, and by far the more serious, the
storm-lashed shore upon which I must presently attempt to make a
safe landing.

This in itself should have been sufficient to dishearten me, for
I had seen seas breaking upon too many shores to lightly ignore the
menace of those incalculable tons of hurtling waters pounding,
crashing, crushing, tearing their way even into the rocky heart of
the eternal hills.

I swam slowly in the direction of the shore, which, fortunately
for me, was in the direction that the storm was carrying me. I had
no mind to sap my strength by unnecessarily overexerting myself;
and so, as I took it easily, content to keep afloat as I moved
slowly shoreward, daylight came; and as each succeeding wave lifted
me to its summit, I saw the shore with increasing clearness. It lay
about a mile from me, and its aspect was most forbidding. Huge
combers were breaking upon a rocky coast line, throwing boiling
fountains of white spume high in air; above the howling of the
tempest, the thunder of the surf rolled menacingly across that mile
of angry sea to warn me that death lay waiting to embrace me at the
threshold of safety.

I was in a quandary. Death lay all about me; it remained but for
me to choose the place and manner of the assignation; I could drown
where I was, or I could permit myself to be dashed to pieces on the
rocks. Neither eventuality aroused any considerable enthusiasm in
my breast. As a mistress, death seemed sadly lacking in many
essentials. Therefore, I decided not to die.

Thoughts may be, as has been said, things; but they are not
everything. No matter how favorably I thought of living, I knew
that I must also do something about it. My present situation
offered me no chance of salvation; the shore alone could give me
life; so I struck out for the shore. As I drew nearer it, many
things, some of them quite irrelevant, passed through my mind; but
some were relevant, among them the Burial Service. It was not a
nice time to think of this, but then we cannot always control our
thoughts; however, "In the midst of life we are in death" seemed
wholly appropriate to my situation. By twisting it a bit, I
achieved something that contained the germ of hope—in the
midst of death there is life. Perhaps--

The tall waves, lifting me high, afforded me for brief instants
vantage points from which I could view the death ahead in the midst
of which I sought for life. The shore line was becoming, at closer
range, something more than an unbroken line of jagged rocks and
white water; but details were yet lacking, for each time I was
allowed but a brief glimpse before being dropped once more to the
bottom of a watery chasm.

My own efforts, coupled with the fury of the gale driving me
shoreward, brought me rapidly to the point where I should presently
be seized by the infuriated seas and hurled upon the bombarded
rocks that reared their jagged heads bleakly above the swirling
waters of each receding comber.

A great wave lifted me upon its crest and carried me
forward—the end had come! With the speed of a race horse it
swept me toward my doom; a welter of spume engulfed my head; I was
twisted and turned as a cork in a whirlpool; yet I struggled to
lift my mouth above the surface for an occasional gasp of air; I
fought to live for a brief moment longer, that I might not be dead
when I was dashed by the merciless sea against the merciless
rocks—thus dominating is the urge to live.

I was carried on; moments seemed an eternity! Where were the
rocks? I almost yearned for them now to end the bitterness of my
futile struggle. I thought of my mother and of Duare. I even
contemplated, with something akin to philosophic calm, the
strangeness of my end. In that other world that I had left forever
no creature would ever have knowledge of my fate. Thus spoke the
eternal egotism of man, who, even in death, desires an
audience.

Now I caught a brief glimpse of rocks. They were upon my left!
when they should have been in front of me. It was incomprehensible.
The wave tore on, carrying me with it; and still I lived, and there
was only water against my naked flesh.

Now the fury of the sea abated. I rose to the crest of a
diminishing comber to look with astonishment upon the comparatively
still waters of an inlet. I had been carried through the rocky
gateway of a landlocked cove, and before me I saw a sandy crescent
beach. I had escaped the black fingers of death; I had been the
beneficiary of a miracle!

The sea gave me a final fillip that rolled me high upon the
sands to mingle with the wrack and flotsam she had discarded. I
stood up and looked about me. A more devout man would have given
thanks, but I felt that as yet I had little for which to give
thanks. My life had been spared temporarily, but Duare was still in
peril.

The cove into which I had been swept was formed by the mouth of
a canyon that ran inland between low hills, the sides and summits
of which were dotted with small trees. Nowhere did I see any such
giants as grow in Vepaja; but perhaps, I mused, what I see here are
not trees on Venus but only underbrush. However, I shall call them
trees, since many of them were from fifty to eighty feet in
height.

A little river tumbled down the canyon's bottom to empty into
the cove; pale violet grass, starred with blue and purple flowers,
bordered it and clothed the hills. There were trees with red boles,
smooth and glossy as lacquer. There were trees with azure boles.
Whipping in the gale was the same weird foliage of heliotrope and
lavender and violet that had rendered the forests of Vepaja so
unearthly to my eyes. But beautiful and unusual as was the scene,
it could not claim my undivided attention. A strange freak of fate
had thrown me upon this shore to which, I had reason to believe,
Duare must undoubtedly have been carried; and now my only thought
was to take advantage of this fortunate circumstance and attempt to
find and succor her.

I could only assume that in the event her abductors had brought
her to this shore their landing must have been made farther along
the coast to my right, which was the direction from which the
Sofal had been moving. With only this slight and
unsatisfactory clue, I started immediately to scale the side of the
canyon and commence my search.

At the summit I paused a moment to survey the surrounding
country and get my bearings. Before me stretched a rolling
table-land, tree-dotted and lush with grass, and beyond that,
inland, rose a range of mountains, vague and mysterious along the
distant horizon. My course lay to the east, along the coast (I
shall use the earthly references to points of compass); the
mountains were northward, toward the equator. I am assuming of
course that I am in the southern hemisphere of the planet. The sea
was south of me. I glanced in that direction, looking for the
Sofal; there she was, far out and moving toward the east.
Evidently my orders were being carried out, and the Sofal
was lying off shore waiting for calm weather that would permit a
landing.

Now I turned my steps toward the east. At each elevation I
stopped and scanned the tableland in all directions, searching for
some sign of those I sought. I saw signs of life, but not of human
life. Herbivorous animals grazed in large numbers upon the
flower-starred violet plain. Many that were close enough to be seen
plainly appeared similar in form to earthly animals, but there was
none exactly like anything I had ever seen on earth. Their extreme
wariness and the suggestion of speed and agility in their
conformations suggested that they had enemies; the wariness, that
among these enemies was man; the speed and agility, that swift and
ferocious carnivores preyed upon them.

These observations served to warn me that I must be constantly
on the alert for similar dangers that might threaten me, and I was
glad that the table-land was well supplied with trees growing at
convenient intervals. I had not forgotten the ferocious basto that
Kamlot and I had encountered in Vepaja, and, though I had seen
nothing quite so formidable as yet among the nearer beasts, there
were some creatures grazing at a considerable distance from me
whose lines suggested a too great similarity to those bisonlike
omnivores to insure ease of mind.

I moved rather rapidly, as I was beset by fears for Duare's
safety and felt that if I did not come upon some clue this first
day my search might prove fruitless. The klangan, I believed, must
have alighted near the coast, where they would have remained at
least until daylight, and my hope was that they might have tarried
longer. If they had winged away immediately, my chances of locating
them were slight; and now my only hope lay in the slender
possibility that I might come across them before they took up their
flight for the day.

The table-land was cut by gullies and ravines running down to
the sea. Nearly all of these carried streams varying in size from
tiny rivulets to those which might be dignified by the appellation
of river, but none that I encountered offered any serious obstacle
to my advance, though upon one or two occasions I was forced to
swim the deeper channels. If these rivers were inhabited by
dangerous reptiles, I saw nothing of them, though I admit that they
were constantly on my mind as I made my way from bank to bank.

Once, upon the table-land, I saw a large, catlike creature at a
distance, apparently stalking a herd of what appeared to be a
species of antelope; but either it did not see me or was more
interested in its natural prey, for although I was in plain sight,
it paid no attention to me.

Shortly thereafter I dropped into a small gully, and when I had
regained the higher ground upon the opposite side the beast was no
longer in sight; but even had it been, it would have been driven
from my thoughts by faint sounds that came to me out of the
distance far ahead. There were what sounded like the shouts of men
and the unmistakable hum of Amtorian pistol fire.

Though I searched diligently with my eyes to the far horizon, I
could see no sign of the authors of these noises; but it was enough
for me to know that there were human beings ahead and that there
was fighting there. Being only human, I naturally pictured the
woman I loved in the center of overwhelming dangers, even though my
better judgment told me that the encounter reverberating in the
distance might have no connection with her or her abductors.

Reason aside, however, I broke into a run; and as I advanced the
sounds waxed louder. They led me finally to the rim of a
considerable canyon, the bottom of which formed a level valley of
entrancing loveliness, through which wound a river far larger than
any I had yet encountered.

But neither the beauty of the valley nor the magnitude of the
river held my attention for but an instant. Down there upon the
floor of that nameless canyon was a scene that gripped my undivided
interest and left me cold with apprehension. Partially protected by
an outcropping of rock at the river's edge, six figures crouched or
lay. Five of them were klangan, the sixth a woman. It was
Duare!

Facing them, hiding behind trees and rocks, were a dozen hairy,
manlike creatures hurling rocks from slings at the beleaguered six
or loosing crude arrows from still cruder bows. The savages and the
klangan were hurling taunts and insults at one another, as well as
missiles; it was these sounds that I had heard from a distance
blending with the staccato hum of the klangan's pistols.

Three of the klangan lay motionless upon the turf behind their
barrier, apparently dead. The remaining klangan and Duare crouched
with pistols in their hands, defending their position and their
lives. The savages cast their stone missiles directly at the three
whenever one of them showed any part of his body above the rocky
breastwork, but the arrows they discharged into the air so that
they fell behind the barrier.

Scattered about among the trees and behind rocks were the bodies
of fully a dozen hairy savages who had fallen before the fire of
the klangan, but, while Duare's defenders had taken heavy toll of
the enemy, the outcome of the unequal battle could have been only
the total destruction of the klangan and Duare had it lasted much
longer.

The details which have taken long in the telling I took in at a
single glance, nor did I waste precious time in pondering the best
course of action. At any moment one of those crude arrows might
pierce the girl I loved; and so my first thought was to divert the
attention of the savages, and perhaps their fire, from their
intended victims to me.

I was slightly behind their position, which gave me an
advantage, as also did the fact that I was above them. Yelling like
a Comanche, I leaped down the steep side of the canyon, firing my
pistol as I charged. Instantly the scene below me changed. The
savages, taken partially from the rear and unexpectedly menaced by
a new enemy, leaped to their feet in momentary bewilderment; and
simultaneously the two remaining klangan, recognizing me and
realizing that succor was at hand, sprang from the shelter of their
barrier and ran forward to complete the demoralization of the
savages.

Together we shot down six of the enemy before the rest finally
turned and fled, but they were not routed before one of the klangan
was struck full between the eyes by a jagged bit of rock. I saw him
fall, and when we were no longer menaced by a foe I went to him,
thinking that he was only stunned; but at that time I had no
conception of the force with which these primitive, apelike men
cast the missiles from their slings. The fellow's skull was
crushed, and a portion of the missile had punctured his brain. He
was quite dead when I reached him.

Then I hastened to Duare. She was standing with a pistol in her
hand, tired and dishevelled, but otherwise apparently little worse
for the harrowing experiences through which she had passed. I think
that she was glad to see me, for she certainly must have preferred
me to the hairy apemen from which I had been instrumental in
rescuing her; yet a trace of fear was reflected in her eyes, as
though she were not quite sure of the nature of the treatment she
might expect from me. To my shame, her fears were justified by my
past behavior; but I was determined that she should never again
have cause to complain of me. I would win her confidence and trust,
hoping that love might follow in their wake.

There was no light of welcome in her eyes as I approached her,
and that hurt me more than I can express. Her countenance rejected
more a pathetic resignation to whatever new trials my presence
might portend.

"You have not been harmed?" I asked. "You are all right?"

"Quite," she replied. Her eyes passed beyond me, searching the
summit of the canyon wall down which I had charged upon the
savages. "Where are the others?" she asked in puzzled and slightly
troubled tones.

"What others?" I inquired.

"Those who came with you from the Sofal to search for
me."

"There were no others; I am quite alone."

Her countenance assumed an even deeper gloom at this
announcement. "Why did you come alone?" she asked fearfully.

"To be honest with you, it was through no fault of my own that I
came at all at this time," I explained. "After we missed you from
the Sofal, I gave orders to stand by off the coast until the
storm abated and we could land a searching party. Immediately
thereafter I was swept overboard, a most fortunate circumstance as
it turned out; and naturally when I found myself safely ashore my
first thought was of you. I was searching for you when I heard the
shouts of the savages and the sound of pistol fire."

"You came in time to save me from them," she said, "but for
what? What are you going to do with me now?"

"I am going to take you to the coast as quickly as possible," I
replied, "and there we will signal the Sofal. She will send
a boat to take us off."

Duare appeared slightly relieved at this recital of my plans.
"You will win the undying gratitude of the jong, my father, if you
return me to Vepaja unharmed," she said. "To have served his
daughter shall be reward enough for me," I replied, "even though I
succeed in winning not even her gratitude."

"That you already have for what you have just done at the risk
of your life," she assured me, and there was more graciousness in
her voice than before.

"What became of Vilor and Moosko?" I asked.

Her lip curled in scorn. "When the kloonobargan attacked us,
they fled."

"Where did they go?" I asked.

"They swam the river and ran away in that direction." She
pointed toward the east.

"Why did the klangan not desert you also?"

"They were told to protect me. They know little else than to
obey their superiors, and, too, they like to fight. Having little
intelligence and no imagination, they are splendid fighters."

"I cannot understand why they did not fly away from danger and
take you with them when they saw that defeat was certain. That
would have insured the safety of all."

"By the time they were assured of that, it was too late," she
explained. "They could not have risen from behind our protection
without being destroyed by the missiles of the kloonobargan."

This word, by way of parenthesis, is an interesting example of
the derivation of an Amtorian substantive. Broadly, it means
savages; literally, it means hairy men. In the singular, it is
nobargan. Gan is man; bar is hair. No is a
contraction of not (with), and is used as a prefix with the
same value that the suffix y has in English; therefore
nobar means hairy, nobargan, hairy man. The prefix
kloo forms the plural, and we have kloonobargan
(hairy men), savages.

After determining that the four klangan were dead, Duare, the
remaining angan, and I started down the river toward the ocean. On
the way Duare told me what had occurred on board the Sofal
the preceding night, and I discovered that it had been almost
precisely as Gamfor had pictured it.

"What was their object in taking you with them?" I asked.

"Vilor wanted me," she replied.

"And Moosko merely wished to escape?"

"Yes. He thought that he would be killed when the ship reached
Vepaja."

"How did they expect to survive in a wild country like this?" I
asked. "Did they know where they were?"

"They said that they thought that the country was Noobol," she
replied, "but they were not positive. The Thorans have agents in
Noobol who are fomenting discord in an attempt to overthrow the
government. There are several of these in a city on the coast, and
it was Moosko's intention to search for this city, where he was
certain that he would find friends who would be able to arrange
transportation for himself, Vilor, and me to Thora."

We walked on in silence for some time. I was just ahead of
Duare, and the angan brought up the rear. He was crestfallen and
dejected. His head and tail feathers drooped. The klangan are
ordinarily so vociferous that this preternatural silence attracted
my attention, and, thinking that he might have been injured in the
fight, I questioned him. "I was not wounded, my captain," he
replied.

"Then what is the matter with you? Are you sad because of the
deaths of your comrades?"

"It is not that," he replied; "there are plenty more where they
came from. It is because of my own death that I am sad."

"But you are not dead!"

"I shall be soon," he averred.

"What makes you think so?" I demanded.

"When I return to the ship, they will kill me for what I did
last night. If I do not return, I shall be killed here. No one
could live alone for long in such a country as this."

"If you serve me well and obey me, you will not be killed if we
succeed in reaching the Sofal again," I assured him.

At that he brightened perceptibly. "I shall serve you well and
obey you, my captain," he promised, and presently he was smiling
and singing again as though he had not a single care in the world
and there was no such thing as death.

On several occasions, when I had glanced back at my companions,
I had discovered Duare's eyes upon me, and in each instance she had
turned them away quickly, as though I had surprised and embarrassed
her in some questionable act. I had spoken to her only when
necessary, for I had determined to atone for my previous conduct by
maintaining a purely official attitude toward her that would
reassure her and give her no cause for apprehension as to my
intentions.

This was a difficult role for me to play while I yearned to take
her into my arms and tell her again of the great love that was
consuming me; but I had succeeded so far in controlling myself and
saw no reason to believe that I should not be able to continue to
do so, at least as long as Duare continued to give me no
encouragement. The very idea that she might give me encouragement
caused me to smile in spite of myself.

Presently, much to my surprise, she said, "You are very quiet.
What is the matter?"

It was the first time that Duare had ever opened a conversation
with me or given me any reason to believe that I existed for her as
a personality; I might have been a clod of earth or a piece of
furniture, for all the interest she had seemed to take in me since
those two occasions upon which I had surprised her as she watched
me from the concealing foliage of her garden.

"There is nothing the matter with me," I assured her. "I am only
concerned with your welfare and the necessity for getting you back
to the Sofal as quickly as possible."

"You do not talk any more," she complained. "Formerly, when I
saw you, you used to talk a great deal."

"Probably altogether too much," I admitted, "but you see, now I
am trying not to annoy you."

Her eyes fell to the ground. "It would not annoy me," she said
almost inaudibly, but now that I was invited to do the very thing
that I had been longing to do, I became dumb; I could think of
nothing to say. "You see," she continued in her normal voice,
"conditions are very different now from any that I have ever before
encountered. The rules and restrictions under which I have lived
among my own people cannot, I now realize, be expected to apply to
situations so unusual or to people and places so foreign to those
whose lives they were intended to govern.

"I have been thinking a great deal about many things—and
you. I commenced to think these strange thoughts after I saw you
the first time in the garden at Kooaad. I have thought that perhaps
it might be nice to talk to other men than those I am permitted to
see in the house of my father, the jong. I became tired of talking
to these same men and to my women, but custom had made a slave and
a coward of me. I did not dare do the things I most wished to do. I
always wanted to talk to you, and now for the brief time before we
shall be again aboard the Sofal, where I must again be
governed by the laws of Vepaja, I am going to be free; I am going
to do what I wish; I am going to talk to you."

This naive declaration revealed a new Duare, one in the presence
of whom it was going to be most difficult to maintain an austere
Platonicism; yet I continued to steel myself to the carrying out of
my resolve.

"Why do you not talk to me?" she demanded when I made no
immediate comment on her confession.

"I do not know what to talk about," I admitted, "unless I talk
about the one thing that is uppermost in my mind."

She was silent for a moment, her brows knit in thought, and then
she asked with seeming innocence, "What is that?"

"Love," I said, looking into her eyes.

Her lids dropped and her lips trembled. "No!" she exclaimed. "We
must not talk of that; it is wrong; it is wicked."

"Is love wicked on Amtor?" I asked.

"No, no; I do not mean that," she hastened to deny; "but it is
wrong to speak to me of love until after I am twenty."

"May I then, Duare?" I asked.

She shook her head, a little sadly I thought. "No, not even
then," she answered. "You may never speak to me of love, without
sinning, nor may I listen without sinning, for I am the daughter of
a jong."

"Perhaps it would be safer were we not to talk at all," I said
glumly.

"Oh, yes, let us talk," she begged. "Tell me about the strange
world you are supposed to come from."

To amuse her, I did as she requested; and walking beside her I
devoured her with my eyes until at last we came to the ocean. Far
out I saw the Sofal, and now came the necessity for devising
a scheme by which we might signal her.

On either side of the canyon, through which the river emptied
into the ocean, were lofty cliffs. That on the west side, and
nearer us, was the higher, and to this I made my way, accompanied
by Duare and the angan. The ascent was steep, and most of the way I
found it, or made it, necessary to assist Duare, so that often I
had my arm about her as I half carried her upward.

At first I feared that she might object to this close contact;
but she did not, and in some places where it was quite level and
she needed no help, though I still kept my arm about her, she did
not draw away nor seem to resent the familiarity. At the summit of
the cliff I hastily gathered dead wood and leaves with the
assistance of the angan, and presently we had a signal fire sending
a smoke column into the air. The wind had abated, and the smoke
rose far above the cliff before it was dissipated. I was positive
that it would be seen aboard the Sofal, but whether it would
be correctly interpreted, I could not know.

A high sea was still running that would have precluded the
landing of a small boat, but we had the angan, and if the
Sofal were to draw in more closely to shore, he could easily
transport us to her deck one at a time. However, I hesitated to
risk Duare in the attempt while the ship was at its present
considerable distance from shore, as what wind there was would have
been directly in the face of the angan.

From the summit of this cliff we could overlook the cliff on the
east side of the canyon, and presently the angan called my
attention to something in that direction. "Men are coming," he
said.

I saw them immediately, but they were still too far away for me
to be able to identify them, though even at a distance I was sure
that they were not of the same race as the savages which had
attacked Duare and the klangan.

Now indeed it became imperative that we attract the attention of
the Sofal immediately, and to that end I built two more
fires at intervals from the first, so that it might be obvious to
anyone aboard the ship that this was in fact a signal rather than
an accidental fire or a camp fire.

Whether or not the Sofal had seen our signal, it was
evident that the party of men approaching must have; and I could
not but believe that, attracted by it, they were coming to
investigate. Constantly they were drawing nearer, and as the
minutes passed we saw that they were armed men of the same race as
the Vepajans.

They were still some distance away when we saw the Sofal
change her course and point her bow toward shore. Our signal had
been seen, and our comrades were coming to investigate; but would
they be in time? For us it was a thrilling race The wind had sprung
up again and the sea was rising once more. I asked the angan if he
could breast the gale, for I had determined to send Duare off at
once if I received a favorable reply.

"I could alone," he said, "but I doubt that I could if I were
carrying another."

We watched the Sofal plunging and wallowing in the rising
sea as it forged steadily closer, and we watched the men drawing
near with equal certainty. There was no doubt in my mind as to
which would reach us first; my only hope now was that the
Sofal could lessen the distance in the meantime sufficiently
so that it would be safe for the angan to attempt to carry Duare to
her.

Now the men had reached the summit of the cliff on the opposite
side of the canyon, and here they halted and observed us while
carrying on a discussion of some nature.

"Vilor is with them!" exclaimed Duare suddenly.

"And Moosko," I added. "I see them both now."

"What shall we do?" cried Duare. "Oh, they must not get me
again!"

"They shall not," I promised her.

Down the canyon side they came now. We watched them swim the
river and cross to the foot of the cliff where we were standing. We
watched the Sofal creeping slowly shoreward. I went to the
edge of the cliff and looked down upon the ascending men. They were
half way up now. Then I returned to Duare and the angan.

"We can wait no longer," I said, and then to the angan, "Take
the janjong and fly to the ship. She is closer now; you can make
it; you must make it!"

He started to obey, but Duare drew away from him. "I will not
go," she said quietly. "I will not leave you here alone!"

For those words I would gladly have laid down my life. Here
again was still another Duare. I had expected nothing like this,
for I did not feel that she owed me any such loyalty. It was not as
though she had loved me; one might expect such self-sacrifice on
the part of a woman for the man she loves. I was swept completely
from my feet, but only for an instant. The enemy, if such it were,
must by now be almost to the summit of the cliff, in a moment they
would be upon us, and even as the thought touched my mind, I saw
the first of them running toward us.

"Take her!" I cried to the angan. "There is no time to waste
now."

He reached for her, but she attempted to elude him; and then I
caught her, and as I touched her, all my good resolutions were
swept away, as I felt her in my arms. I pressed her to me for an
instant; I kissed her, and then I gave her over to the birdman.

"Hurry!" I cried. "They come!"

Spreading his powerful wings, he rose from the ground, while
Duare stretched her hands toward me. "Do not send me away from you,
Carson! Do not send me away! I love you!"

But it was too late; I would not have called her back could I
have done so, for the armed men were upon me.

Thus I went into captivity in the land of Noobol an adventure
that is no part of this story; but I went with the knowledge that
the woman I loved, loved me, and I was happy.